Konoha Hair and Nail Salon
by FlightAngel
Summary: A professional hairstylist: beauty-school trained, classy, and silent with remorse. A hometrained hairdresser: crude, spunky and refusing to solve problems years old. Throw a love rival into the mix, and, well: there you go. Gaanaru AU
1. One

Konoha Hair and Nail salon

--by Flightangel

-o-o-o-o-

1

-o-o-o-o-

It was loud, bright, chaotic—full to the brim with bustling people: hairstylists, makeup-artists, actors, celebrities, models, and those-who-just-can. Backstage was a place where people tripped over their costumes, screamed at their agents and scurried about in only their bra and underwear and demanded to see their lawyer. The New Year conference at Windstill Hall was such an important and influential event that, apparently, brought together a vast assortment of people from all over the world, as far as the eye could see, and almost just as much drama.

It was too loud and too bright for a young singer-aspiring-model, perched on a wooden stool as two almost positively lesbian hairstylists bitched over his hair.

"Look honey, you hold the straightener this way, _this way_, not that way, okay? We don't have that much time so get your ass up and running!"

"Well, at _my_ salon," the taller, "beginner" woman with the pink Mohawk said hotly, "we straighten the hair one section at a time. It's _quality_, babe, not speed that counts!"

The squabble would have gone further if the model's agent didn't hastily intervene, shifting his clipboard under his arm as he physically separated the two.

"Look you, girls, I'm sure you're both fine hairstylists, but can we get a move on?" He pointedly looked at his watch, eyes darting from his client to the stage to the hairstylists, "Sasuke's up in ten and he hasn't had his make-up or clothes done yet, okay?"

The Mohawk-lady took the time to throw the finger at the other woman, drawing a gasp from the other. She stomped away angrily and Mohawk-lady continued on "quality-straightening" Sasuke's poor hair.

Uchiha Sasuke himself was up to his eyeballs in boredom.

He hated conferences, he hated Los Angelos, and he hated, _hated_ his hairstylist. At least, the hairstylist dragging her claws through his hair at the moment. Why couldn't Kakashi book his _own_ hairstylist, who would be (ideally) professional, fast, and didn't bitch with other stylists and take up wasteful time? Damn the man! He'd strangle the agent with his bare-hands if he wasn't so worried about ruining his manicure.

Dressed smartly in a black collared t-shirt, white jeans and designer shoes that Kakashi _insisted_ to get him for his twenty-fourth birthday, he drummed his (so importantly) manicured nails on the table and gritted his teeth as the damn hairstylist practically tugged his hair out of his skull. _Ow_. The other lesbian was right; this girl was a beginner. He would have kicked her away if he wasn't "in the weeds", up in ten minutes. Kakashi's darting eyes was enough for his adrenaline to start pumping.

Why were girls always _so slow_?! They were loud, dramatic, and often waved the straightener so close to his face that he was afraid they were going to singe off his eyebrows.

They're boobs always bouncing around, they smelled funny, and, excuse him, but why weren't they in the _least bit _intelligent? If they didn't like someone, wasn't it much more efficient to tell it to their face rather than gossip behind their back and have the other party find out two months later?

The damn lady took four minutes to_ finally_ finish his hair (Kakashi was nearly dancing around in anxiety), wherein he was immediately whirled into the makeup section for a quick dab of sneeze-inducing foundation (but Sasuke was experienced enough to hold himself from sneezing) and some designer picked-out clothes before he stood in a line of singers and dancers and models and was resorting to lip-reading with his agent.

Every time it was the same. From concerts to shows to parties, he'd always ended up "borrowing" someone else's hairstylist and ended up ready only _minutes _before it was his turn. It was stressful. It was infuriating. It drove Sasuke up the wall and made him pull out his hair and bite Kakashi in the arm.

"Next time I'm getting my own hairstylist," he mouthed angrily in the gray-haired man's direction, hands pointing at his hair, "and it's got to be a _guy._ You understand?"

Kakashi cheerfully waved at him with his clipboard. Sasuke resisted the urge to stomp his foot on the floor and, instead, threw the older man the finger, before being dragged on stage in the spotlight.

He needed his own stylist.

He _wanted_ his own stylist.

And if an Uchiha wanted something, he'd get it. Why?

Because Uchihas _always_ get what they want.

-o-o-o-o-

It was a quiet—though chilly—day.

A single Californian city shuddered in the chill and bundled itself up in the nicely heated stores and shops and homes and wished the winter to be over and done with. Despite the cold, however, most markets were still open and running with the patrons and staff dressed up in mitts and jackets and completely determined to continue making a living.

The Konoha Hair and Nail Salon was no exception.

Located in the Japanese-district of the city, where most shops had everything written in both English and Japanese and where women and men alike greeted even the whitest Caucasian with "konnichi-wa" (at the appropriate time, of course), it continued to bustle and wheeze and work itself to the bone.

Some employees worried about their fingers falling off, though the heater was on full-blast.

Stupid, _broken _ventilation system. Tsunade needed to install a new one.

Though heating was expensive and aggravating and always incited a multitude of complaints, it was inevitable. No way in hell the blonde manager was going to go around wearing some poofy jacket while trying to paint some middle-aged woman's nails.

"Alright, whose turn is it to order lunch this time?" Tsunade barked from her spacious stand at the nails portion of the store, startling her current customer with her brash, loud voice.

Dressed in a loose green poncho, a white shirt, and some faded work jeans, she click-clacked her heels against the tile floor, blew bubblegum, and continuously inspired a sort of respected fear in the hearts of the employees.

She was loud, she was rude, she was blunt, and, most of all, she was untouchable, because she was the _manager_.

There was only one great, pure-bred Japanese bakery left standing alive in the hazy smog hanging over the city: a small whitewashed store located on the corner of a shopping mall near the salon. It tantalizingly displayed its lavish wedding cakes, drool-worthy lunch specials, and those delicious desserts of theirs in a small display case behind the window.

It was founded and run faithfully by the Akimichi family, a group of heavyset yet kind-hearted Japanese chefs, who had resided in the small Californian town for years.

They enjoyed food and enjoyed cooking and especially enjoyed the fact that their little bakery attracted every Japanese-American within a five mile radius, who apparently enjoyed their cooking as well.

Life was good.

Life was even better for them, because, though there were their ups and downs, good days and bad days, there was always the guarantee that their little bakery would receive a rather copious lunch-order from, yours truly, the Konoha Hair and Nail Salon. After a while, that was a _lot_ of money.

Tsunade tossed her self-cut blonde pigtails across her shoulder with a slight twirl of her hand, showing off her blood-red nails in an almost menacing manner as she looked about the salon with a scrutinizing glare.

"I just know it's not Haku, 'cause he went and got it last time. Anyone up for the—"

The phone rang.

A blonde college student shrieked: "Sakura, isn't that the phone?"

"What? Pick it up, pick it up!"

"This?"

"No, the other phone, the pink one with white polka-dots—no, the other pink one! That one! On the—oh, here, let me get it—" A perfectly manicured hand snatched the receiver up with an air of expertise.

A pink-haired secretary dressed in nothing but a t-shirt and skirt—how was that possible?—gave her blonde-haired friend a teasing wave before addressing the caller. Her voice became honey-sweet. "Hello, welcome to Konoha Hair and Nail Salon, how may I help you?"

"Anyone up for the job?" Tsunade repeated loudly, knocking on her stand..

"Yes, of course you can make reservations…I'm sorry? Ten dollars for a trim, Fifteen and higher for more elaborate hairstyles. Fifty for highlights and color. A haircut? At what time? Who do you want to be your hairstylist?" Sakura shot an urgent look towards her boss and mouthed: "_Ooh, I would, but I can't"_ and waved her just-recently-painted fingers at the impatiently clicking woman.

The manager growled and turned around to glare pointedly at her two hairstylists, both busy with their own customers and ignoring their manager's scratchy voice. "Gaara?"

The addressed hairstylist cocked his head a bit, momentarily pausing in his cutting. Dressed in the classy maroon-apron, black Capri pants, and white t-shirt uniform of the salon, Sabaku Gaara—with his layered, stylishly-cut crimson hair; exotic green eyes; quiet, distant demeanor; and quick, unmatched skill in trimming—showed little interest in the chill or the broken ventilation or anything at all, for that matter. However…

"It's cold." he said flatly. Tsunade gestured for the youth to put on a coat or something, but the man remained obstinately rooted to the floor.

"It's cold." he repeated.

Oh, silly her. It seemed like, though he wasn't affected at all by the cold, he didn't like it. _Wonderful_. She would've put her red-lacquered nails to his throat if the man wasn't the only professionally trained stylist in the salon and was the only one she hadn't gotten around to know well.

She tried to exhale calmly. "Naruto?"

"Tell whoever it is on the phone that I'm taking the day off on Monday!" The blonde stylist shouted humorously at Sakura—ignoring Tsunade in the process—as he madly blew a customer's hair off with a blow-dryer, equipped with two combs in his left hand, one in-between his teeth, and a bottle of mousse in his right. "Tell him he's gotta pick Gaara, 'cause I'm not gonna come back on my free day just to please a single damn customer!"

"Naruto!"

Uzamaki Naruto turned around with a brilliant, lip-stretching grin, lowering the speed of his hair-dryer and patting his patron—too casually for Tsunade's professional side, but she could scold him later—before seating himself down in one of his self-proclaimed breaks.

"What?"

"Go get our damn lunches!"

"Can't!" the rambunctious blond called out from his position in a dresser's chair, "I got my nails done too! You see? Sakura and I did them together!"

"Tough luck, kid! You go get the orders!"

Naruto's wail was heard all the way into the lobby, "Whaaaat? Oh, c'mon, how's that fair? Tsunade-baachaaaaaan!"

"Shut up!" the woman's roar shook the foundations of the store. "Just go and get our damn food already, I'm _hungry_!"

Naruto gestured wildly at his current patron, as if saying: _How can I abandon a customer during work? Huh?_

"A-ano," his client stuttered from her chair, a young journalist on her lunch break that often came by to get a trim, "It's okay, Naruto-san, you can go get lunch. I'll wait, it's okay."

"Hinata-chan!" Naruto pretended to burst into tears and encircled the small woman—who gave a little shriek—in a bear hug, lips pouting, "So kind! You have such a kind heart! Unlike some _other_ women out there." He pointedly looked at the bubble-gum chewing manager with daggers in his blue eyes.

Tsunade wanted to smack the kid in-between the eyes. Damn casual _child_! Didn't the man know how to act professionally for once in his _damn_ life?

Though she could immediately see why the Uzamaki's casual manner would appeal to the more every-day worker-type customers: carefree, chipper, and usually smiling, the boy was an expert at making small talk and acting in a generally crude yet somewhat relaxing manner, becoming extravagant at times to try and keep the customer's attention.

Despite that, however, she sometimes wished the boy had Gaara's quiet, meticulous, _professional_ demeanor. The redhead was an expert at cutting and trimming and working into fine detail, and always managed to finish his work before an hour was up. He never said a word, got the job done fast, and was always _cordial _and _polite _and _skilled _and didn't make a habit of touching the customers or chatting with customers or being too damn _close _to customers.

The kid was so—so—_gaaaah!_

The blonde woman growled, crossing her arms over her rather buxom chest, "Do I look like I care?"

The addressed hairstylist spent a precious moment pouting (in a very manly fashion, of course), mouth pursing into a thin line, peering at his still freshly painted nails with a somber expression—well, if they got messed up (and they would), he could always have nice, quiet Haku to do them over for him.

Tsunade was a great nail-polisher too, but, _damn, _that woman pushed your cuticles back so hard, you wanted to scream and beg for mercy.

"That is _sooooo_ not fair!" he continued to protest, blowing on the nails as he went to pick up the printed-weekly order sheet set underneath the left storage cabinet, "My nails are drying! Why can't you guys respect that?"

"No one cares if your nails are drying, brat! They dry faster in the cold!"

"But Sakura's nails are drying too and you don't make her go and order food!" Naruto yelled crossly, but received no response from Tsunade other than a very wicked, very sharp smile.

Growling in reluctant defeat, he purposely snapped a checked headband onto his forehead with a loud crack and pushed back his fringe of tousled blonde hair.

Turning around to give his manager a futile puppy-look with his large blue eyes, he, with a melodramatic sigh and a wave at Hinata—who shyly waved back—pulled on a large overcoat and sulkily slunk out of the store.

-o-o-o-o-

This small Japanese district has always been considerably quiet from its origins back in the day, other than the odd crazy gossip chain of Japanese women and drama in the office and the occasional racist battles or two that occurred every year. Despite these issues, however, the residents have always enjoyed relatively _Californian_ peace (aka flashing lights, booze parties, crazy college students), detached from the outside world of fad and fashion and celebrities.

That is, until the day Uzamaki Naruto accidentally barreled into a certain ebony-haired celebrity and knocked him out on the sidewalk.

-o-o-o-o-

It had been Itachi's idea for Sasuke to dab into the modeling business.

It was brought up during one of their occasional I-am-better-than-thou-so-obey-me sessions at IHOP on a Saturday morning; sessions that Sasuke had been reluctantly dragged to by his agent every week for a year.

Their family counselor had suggested that constant exposure between the brothers would "increase" their affection for each other.

In reality, it just made the singer want to strangle his brother even more, if that was possible.

"Since it obvious that your _meager _voice will _never_ hit mainstream," his holier-than-thou brother remarked icily as he picked his nails, pointedly ignoring his barely-nibbled-on pancakes and, instead, drank his coffee, "I think it may be better if you put those looks of yours into the modeling market. Do something you're actually _good at_."

Sasuke resisted the urge to snap that he was _already_ mainstream and he _was_ good at singing (whatever his brother said)—and that he had absolutely no intention to flaunt his abs to the public—and, as if to mock Itachi, took a huge bite out of his pancake. Hey, _he_ wasn't the Uchiha brother who refused to eat even a sandwich because he was self-conscious about his body image.

"What about you, brother?" he said coldly after the two had lapsed into an uncomfortably stiff-necked silence. "Shouldn't you be working as a nail-painter or something? You seem to have more skill in that then your own singing."

The older brother narrowed his eyes, a dangerous glint playing in its depths, and nonchalantly slipped his painted nails under the table.

"Touché." He murmured, and asked for the check.

As Sasuke aimed dirty looks all throughout the transaction—Itachi seemed to relish in making Sasuke indebted to him by paying the damn check every time—the older brother coolly flicked back a strand of hair and made a move for the exit.

"Think about it." was all he said before he was gone.

Sasuke stomped all the way back to his hotel room, hissed at cats, threw the finger at a kid who had the nerve to try and rub his boogers onto his pant leg and called Kakashi. Two days later, he was on his way, sulking, with sunglasses covering his eyes to his first photo-shoot uptown.

An Uchiha always got what he wanted. And if Uchiha Itachi wanted his brother to be a model, than his brother became a model.

One wonders if Itachi ordered Sasuke to jump off a cliff, the singer would be so enraged that he'd actually do it.

_Foolish little brother._

-o-o-o-o-

Hatake Kakashi was an odd man, to say the least: with his questionably natural grayish hair, laid-back pose and expression, and his habit of blatantly carrying around porn in public, he often stood out in the crowd like a whale does amid a sea of plankton.

Despite his odd quirks, however, he proved to be a rather viable and valuable agent—he seemed to know all the right people and had the right connections and had an interesting talent of being able to generally wriggle his clients into whatever company or occasion they wanted.

He was the one who did the research on the hair stylists, makeup artists, fashion designers, upcoming events and radio stations that Sasuke dropped by every so often, designing a schedule that craftily promoted Sasuke's songs and image without forcing it on others with such desperation that all the victims felt would be resentment.

Resentment was _beyond_ Kakashi. That man could do wonders.

Despite Kakashi's wonder-inducing magic, however, Sasuke was not happy. In fact, the man was ferociously _outraged_.

"Is there not a _single _hairstylist that is _decent_,_ intelligent,_ and _professional_ in the whole United States?" he howled as he flung his water-bottle into the mirror—Kakashi flinched when the thing cracked—before throwing himself onto the couch, mood immediately shifting from enraged to moody. "Damn you, Kakashi, I thought you had connections!"

"I _do _have connections," the man said sulkily, arms crossed and back plastered onto the hotel-room wall, "you just keep shooting them down."

It was a rather true statement, as a matter of fact—after discussing his complaints with Kakashi after the New Year Conference, the agent had paired him up with at least six different hairstylists, all of which had been tossed aside after no more than two photo sessions.

They were either too slow, too ugly, too talkative, too casual, too stupid… the list went on and on and Kakashi was running out of alternatives while Sasuke sat around picking at his hair.

"Is that _my_ fault?" the brunette suddenly shrieked, rising up from the seat with a fringe of black hair framing his face, "Is it my fault that all those damn men you paired up with me were insane and inefficient? _All I ask for_ is someone who is skilled enough to do my hair in a professional manner every time I go to a photo shoot. That's it! No biggie! _God_!"

Kakashi watched humorously—a screaming Sasuke was rather funny in a weird twisted way—as the brunette pulled on an oversized overcoat and stalked out of the room with an audible slam, hopefully heading towards the Japanese district of the city to maybe go sit in a café, drink green tea and calm down.

The agent was briefly reminded of the days when he used to baby-sit the young Uchiha for ten dollars per hour all through his college years until the kid was almost twelve, when Itachi was still starting up his own singing career and their parents were still up and around. The young heir would run around screaming at the top of his lungs, throwing himself onto the couch in a fit of wails and shrieks and bit and clawed the gray-haired man whenever he tried to wrestle him off.

Sasuke was _the_ demon child back then—not saying that he was any better now, but at least his tantrums didn't include shrieking or biting anymore.

Sighing, Kakashi reached for the cellphone tucked snugly inside his belt, and dialed the number of his sweetie down in San Francisco.

Talking to Iruka always made him feel better.

-o-o-o-o-

Naruto staggered back into a few Japanese shoppers—who indignantly shoved him back—clutching his sore forehead as his narrowed, blue eyes tried to make out who was stupid enough not to see where the hell he was walking (though he never considered that it was _he_ who hadn't been looking where he was going. Oh well. Naruto was just like that.)

His biting words died in his throat when he realized that the aforementioned man he was looking for was currently lying unconscious on the sidewalk, a small puddle of blood oozing out from the left side of his head.

It looked painful.

Ooooooh…._shit_.

-o-o-o-o-

Hyuuga Neji was a regular customer at the Konoha Hair and Nail Salon.

A quiet, though not shy, businessman who worked in the family business, he regularly attended dinner at the main house every Saturday and just happened to like to get his hair and nails done before the said event.

Thus, he found himself seated once again in the soft, cushiony dresser's chair, reading a magazine from eight months ago as he waited for Gaara to come back from tending another customer.

Meanwhile, he attempted to tune out the gossip being flung from the secretary to the regular that just so happened to be one of the loudest woman he'd ever heard of.

He attempted to tune out the weight of an argument he'd had with his lover that morning, though he found his mind alternating between this and the gossip, and it was driving him insane.

He attempted to think of the normal, _happy, _everyday goings of his office: _director's meeting next Tuesday_, _small informal dinner at Hinata-sama's house at eight o' clock tomorrow, must send offer letters to those miniscule little underlings out in Chicago somewhere, file lawsuit against rival company for publicly slandering the Japanese culture… _yet all he could think of was this:

"And she was like, no way! And then he just stood there! He's quite a looker, too, and she was leaving _so many hints_, and Tenten and I were like_, oh my god_! Why didn't she just go out with him?"

_The argument had been his own fault, he _knew_ that, but he wasn't sure if he could apologize. Did he need to? It had been partially _his_ fault too, dammit, so _he _had to apologize, too—_

"You know what I think? I think Temari's playing hard-to-get. She wants Shika to trail after her like a puppy and roll over on his back in submission, so she can rub it in later. You know what I mean? It pisses me off so bad, 'cause Shika's a good guy, though a bit lazy, and he's honest and hardworking and she's all like 'nuh-uh! You gotta show me you love me before I'm gonna start letting you in my bed'."

_He wondered how mad the other man was at him? Enough to—dare he think?—dump him for good? Just the mere suggestion them breaking their relationship suddenly turned Neji's fingers cold. _

"Well, there's nothing wrong with playing hard-to-get, really. You just got to have tact. Sakura, can you pass me that body spray? I'm starting to smell like burned hair. Oh, did you hear about Kiba? What he did last week?"

_He wouldn't do that, would he? After being together for so long? Neji attempted to reassure himself… but, still, he felt sick. As if he ate too much slightly undercooked pancakes._

"When he spent the entire day with a hole in his trousers? Yeah, heard it from Hinata. The coworkers were snickering at him for days."

_You certainly growled at him enough, a small voice mused in the back of his mind. You made him feel like trash for just talking to someone—what else would you expect?_

"You know what I heard, too?" Yamanaka Ino, a college student majoring in Psychology gestured at Neji's quiet cousin patiently waiting for her hairstylist to return from a short lunch break, lowering her voice, "I heard that it was Hinata herself was the one that told him about it by asking him, right in front of everyone else, if he would like her to sew that up for him. _In front of everyone_. Poor girl, thought she was smarter than that!"

_She is smarter than that_, Neji thought with a tick on his forehead, covering up his face with the image of a model posing in lingerie, suddenly tuning back to the gossip, _and your gossip is horrible. Temari told Shikamaru that she'd think about it and get back to him, and Kiba had a hole in his shirt, not his trousers. That, and it was Shino who told him, not Hinata-sama_. But by now, the Hyuuga had enough wits about him to keep his musing silent, and, instead, checked the clock.

Thankfully enough, Sabaku Gaara finished doing whatever he was doing with another customer and returned to the quiet business man, cool and aloof as usual, glittering green eyes scrutinizing the Hyuuga's fine, wet and shampooed hair.

Sabaku Gaara had always been odd. Though he was quiet. Neji liked that.

Being a rather complex man who delved often into the world of trade secrets and business, he'd rather not be put into a situation where he'd accidentally blurt out information about a personal affair and have it spread like wildfire through the gossip chain of insane, Japanese women.

Despite his usual oddness, however, Neji began to seriously worry about the man's sanity when the hairdresser picked up a seemingly normal hairdryer and began scrutinizing that, too. After what seemed to be an eternity, he finally turned it on, allowing a welcome stream of heated air suddenly coming in contact with Neji's wet face.

Directing it towards the now alert businessman's hair, he very carefully dried the ends out before viciously scrubbing the man's head with a towel and wrapping the dripping locks of hair into a temporary turban.

He paused a moment in his routine shampoo-and-cut pace. "The usual?"

The soft, questioning comment caught Neji by surprise, as the redhead had never asked such a thing before. He had always quietly given the business the same trim and shampooing every time, a quiet yet avid observer who had accurately tagged the Hyuuga has a man of routine. The man quickly wondered if his—what he considered _well hidden_—depression had come to notice. To be depressed to the point where even one of the most apathetic stylists he knew was concerned over his wellbeing was astonishing.

Before he could say anything—or perhaps accidentally blurt out every piece of his personal life—however, a sudden shriek startled every living soul in the store, directing everyone's attention to a certain blond waving his arms about in the doorway. It wasn't the shriek or the waving or the expression on the man's face that caught attention first.

What horrified the alert staff and patrons the most was the red on his face and hands.

_Blood_.

"Someone call an ambulance!" the hairstylist shrieked, all drama and jokes lost in the very franticness in his eyes, "Oh my god, I think I killed someone!"

-o-o-o-o-

AN: As a general warning, this story may move a bit slow. In fact, I'm well known for a being slow. Thanks for reading this far! Reviews were much appreciated XD. I apologize for any errors (Sasuke is purposely prissy in this fanfic and will remain prissy), especially typos. I try and fix as many as I can, but, without a beta, I'm always bound to miss something. Some hints of Gaanaru are going to appear in Chapter Two... so it does exist. Hopefully something happens in chapter three? Thanks again!


	2. Two

Konoha Hair and Nail salon

--by Flightangel

-o-o-o-o-

2

-o-o-o-o-

Itachi didn't like to be distracted.

The stoic, perhaps sadistic man was not one who was often bothered; instead, he spent time lounging on couches thinking of all the ways he _couldn't_ be bothered. Triple locks on all doors, windows and cars; a bodyguard whose only job was to keep the paparazzi away; a cell-phone whose number he'd hand to fan-girls and always have securely turned _off_.

The list went on and on.

Even his manager, an even more mysterious and stoic man, wondered if such isolation was healthy for lead singer. Hell, he sometimes wondered if the man had any feelings at all, especially when Itachi's only cellphone rang during a recording and the—only slightly embarrassed—Uchiha was forced to go and pick it up.

"Yes?" the singer said softly—_menacingly—_carefully pulling back a loose strand of hair so that he wouldn't smear his outrageously done makeup. "What?" A little narrowing of the eyes, slight flare in the nostrils. "Is that it?"

He snapped his cellphone and threw it in his purse—er, bag. Uchihas don't carry purses.

"Uchiha-san?" Kisame, one of the sound producers, raised a concerned brow at the fuming star, who had again rearranged his hair and tugged at his shirt and went back into the stage. He had the manner of someone who was irritated at being unnecessarily bothered, as if he was just informed of something laughingly trivial. "What was that?"

"My little brother's in the hospital." he stated. After a brief paused, he couldn't help but mutter, under his breath: "Foolish Little Brother."

"That phrase should be patented, un," Deidara, another singer under the manager's care, whispered. Kisame sighed, as if he's been strained through this type of behavior multiple times, and turned around, silently asking the manager if he should reset the song. The manager, however, was too busy wondering what kind of man would nonchalantly dismiss a hospital call as trivial.

An insane man perhaps. Hell, Itachi had already picked out his funeral casket.

The guy was off his rocker.

-o-o-o-o-

Sasuke woke up to the whiff of bleach and detergent and dead people, a rather peculiar odor. Eyes fluttering open—it took almost all his effort to firmly detach his upper lid from his lower lid—he winced a bit at the blinding light streaming in from the window, attacking his retinas and, seemingly, relishing in his discomfort.

Seeing as everything within his eye's view was white, clean, swabbed and locally disinfected, he needed no amount of wagering to know exactly where he was lying, what he was doing here, and who the hell he was going to give a piece of his mind to when he got up.

If he could get up.

He experimentally tried to lift his head and was immediately brought back down to earth when a piercing shock of pain from somewhere behind his left ear left him gasping. After a few yoga-like breaths, he resisted his urge to try again and turned to considering _exactly _what he was going to do to that—that—_stupid_ blond.

He clenched his jaw, thinking back to what exactly had happened and provided the circumstances for The Moment of Impact (the instant now deserved capital letters, he noted to himself).

Angry at Kakashi's stupidity. No good hairdressers. He went walking down the sidewalk, shoving his way through crowds of loud, raucous Californians and swearing in Japanese, muttering things to himself as he tried to shield his face from the chilly winter cold. The grounds were clear of snow and the sun was shining bright, but the bitter cold was relentless and dug into every bit of exposed skin it could find on Sasuke's body.

As he spent more time buffeted by the wind, however, he found that his anger began to slowly subside. Instead, his thoughts were replaced by the image of heading into a warm, cozy café where nice, polite Japanese women would serve him green tea and _mochi_ and maybe some _zaru soba_, with the little dipping sauce and seaweed he oh-so-loved… among other things. Just the image provided the fuel for him to walk down to the Konoha Shopping District, the official Japanese marketplace where everything and everyone seemed to be—or were required to be, either way—bilingual.

In fact, he was walking so fast against the cold that he was momentarily blinded by the dry gusts blowing into his eyeballs, and had to momentarily duck his head down to rub his eyes—when the moment of impact happened.

It was a sudden, split moment, in which his forehead came to meet another's with a sickening crack, and surprised him so much that he fell over onto the sidewalk. The concrete sidewalk.

Loss of consciousness was inevitable.

He hadn't a good look at his attacker (he didn't think once of blaming himself) but he knew the kid was _blond_ and male and had immediately started shrieking when he'd finally saw the collapsed Uchiha on the ground.

He had awakened from consciousness a few times to—very blurrily—catch a glimpse of an odd, emo-looking redhead; two impossibly large breasts (girls and their breasts… even half-dead, they still tried to shove them into his face); a pink-haired lady; and two doctors who insisted on asking him stupid questions like: "Son, what's your name? What date is it? Do you know if you're a boy or girl?"

In fact, the questions had been so stupid that, at one point, he had to be sedated because he'd attempted to strangle one of the doctors when he moved into to try and insert an IV into his arm. Thus, him waking up here. Lovely.

A nurse bustled in primly, hair tucked in a neat bun behind her head and dressed in one of those idiotic-looking paper blue-things that Sasuke didn't like because they tore. They were also unfashionable.

As one knew, Sasuke (and his brother Itachi, now that one thinks of it) didn't appreciate things that were unfashionable.

"Ooh, so the darling's awake." she cooed, absent-mindedly patting his hand, "how are you feeling, sweetie?"

_God_. One of _these_ kinds of nurses. He would have slapped her cold, lotioned hand away if he'd had the energy. Rather upsettingly for the young pop star, he didn't.

Instead, he resorted to boring deep, dark holes into her skull with his dark, black-eyed glare… of which his family was oh-so famous for. The nurse paid no mind and cheerily inserted something in his IV, sending chills down the Uchiha's spine when he _felt_ something rush into the vein of his arm. In fact, the sensation was so creepy that he couldn't help but jolt. The nurse patted his arm again.

"Look, sweetie, I need for you to be good and stay still so I can give you your medicine, okay? It'll help the pain go away." Again, a pulse of cold liquid swam sluggishly into his arm, and Sasuke felt momentarily horrified and even a bit disgusted. He's never been on an IV before. Never.

Having stuff being inserted through his arm was _creepy_.

Thankfully, he was quickly distracted from the said creepiness by a concerned, familiar voice.

"Sasuke, are you alright?"

If Sasuke was anyone less than _the_ Uchiha Sasuke, rising pop star and aspiring model, he would've cried out in joy and reached for the anxious man who had appeared in the doorway—if he _could've_ reached his arms. Instead, he resorted to staring at the brunette with his eyes, as he did with the nurse, but with a slightly… less murderous glint in his pupils. This man was an _angel_.

He quietly discussed Sasuke's personal space issues with the nurse, who cheerily left after some persuasion, before turning to the aforementioned model with his soft brown eyes.

When Sasuke was little—no more than four or five at the beginning—he had often been baby-sat by Kakashi, who, at the time, was still in college studying business and finance and needed some money to pay for that damn car he'd been eying since senior year in high school. Sasuke knew that he'd been a murderous little child, taking every chance to bite and scratch the gray-haired man, insisting on running around with no pants and throwing the middle finger at his caretaker, a bad habit he'd picked up from his Kisame, his old baby-sitter.

In fact, it was because of this bad habit that Kisame had been fired. Itachi went on strike and hid in his room for days.

It wasn't until months of endless torture and scratch marks covering both arms when Kakashi finally decided that he couldn't sit around in boredom and in fear of being scratched any longer. In fact, he was determined to have some _fun_ whilst baby-sitting, even if it meant tweaking the rules a bit.

Sasuke had stared intently when Kakashi decided to bring his boyfriend over.

"Sasuke," Kakashi said firmly, earning a sour look from the youngster, "this is Iruka. Iruka is my boyfriend. Be nice to him."

"Hello, Sasuke," Iruka said with a bright glow in his eyes (it frightened Sasuke, actually), smiling confidently before bowing his head. Sasuke yanked his ponytail and ran shrieking upstairs when Kakashi got a hold of one of the kitchen knives.

Despite early misgivings, however, Sasuke found himself more inclined towards Iruka's more soothing, more confident manner than Kakashi's bored and lazy way of handling things. Perhaps it was Iruka's stronger connection with his feminine side; perhaps it was because Iruka had taken Early Childhood classes in high school and just knew how to handle children. Either way, the Uchiha would often hide behind the brunette whenever he seemed to ignite Kakashi's anger—rip up his porn, sing off-key while he was trying to do homework, purposely turning the whole bathroom into a pool—and the brunette was an effective shield.

Excluding the tugging-hair incident, he never did anything else that physically harmed the college freshman, though he continued to bite and scratch and kick Kakashi to his heart's content. The growling student was positive that the boy was out to get him.

Seeing Iruka after a moment of crisis was, to Sasuke, like an angel being sent from God. Except that Kakashi was far from being like God in any way possible. Oh, well.

"Kakashi was talking to me when he got a call from the hospital that an 'Uchiha Sasuke' had just been rushed in from a head collision and I just had to get here right away." Iruka explained evenly and clearly in his best informative voice, a tone he had long honed teaching as a professor at a beauty school, as if he was completely calm.

Though his slightly shaking hands and wide eyes told a slightly different tale.

Sasuke immediately realized that Iruka was still in his work clothes: apron, white button-down shirt, black pants; seeing the teacher's slightly haggard face and slight panting, he—very guiltily—knew that "getting here right away" hadn't been an exaggeration. The brunette had probably driven top speed the entire half-an-hour drive from San Francisco just to see how he was doing.

It was a little heart-warming, the Uchiha had to admit.

"Sasuke, what happened? They said you collapsed in front of a beauty salon and was than carted over here with a crack in your skull—" Seeing Sasuke's frantic look, Iruka immediately reassured him: "No, no, you don't need surgery. You just had to get some stitches done, that's all."

The singer relaxed a bit before tensing, hissing in slight pain. He breathed out slowly. "Some dumbass blond crashed into me and knocked me on the sidewalk." _Whom I'll find and kill once I can move_.

Sasuke tried to radiate what Kakashi called the model's "reassuring grin" ("Eyes soft, eyebrows up, smile sincere—no, no, don't snarl, Sasuke!"), but ended up with something that resembled a self-possessed smirk instead. "I'm fine, Iruka. Where's that bastard, Kakashi?"

The beautician sighed, haggard. In the light, the slight indentions of eye bags were painfully clear. Sasuke felt a slight pang—now that he thought of it, both Iruka and Kakashi were growing old… well, to him, anyway. In fact, now that he thought of it, Kakashi was turning forty-two this year, wasn't he?

"He's trying to drag your ass out of being dumped for the Calvin Klein model photo shoot since you can't make it on account of your injury. Be lucky he's got connections."

Sasuke snorted. "Connections, connections. Some connections. He can't even find me a decent hairstylist." The brunette would have used the moment to twirl his hair around his pale, ivory fingers, but was stopped by ringing, painful reminders of his recent accident.

Iruka laughed good-heartedly. He crouched down so that he was at eye-level with Sasuke's bed—if one could call it a bed—before looking quite thoughtful.

"Sasuke," he addressed the singer hesitantly, fingers coming to his chin in deliberating thought. "Sasuke, I've been working as a beauty college professor for more than ten years. In fact, I have plenty of students that graduated who I know are quite successful nowadays. If you like, maybe I can help set you up with one nearby…?"

Okay, erase whatever Sasuke had thought about Iruka being an angel before. Iruka wasn't an angel.

Iruka was a _god_.

-o-o-o-o-

The shop was in uproar. Even Gaara abandoned his patron to rush outside, not to see the injured party, but to try and stop Naruto from flailing his arms and potentially wounding a customer. The blond was hysterical: "Oh my god! Oh my god! _Kami-sama, forgive me_!"

"Naruto!" Tsunade barged her way through the crowd of curious, horrified and annoyed people, hair mussed and various strands of blonde sticking out everywhere, "Naruto, shut up, he isn't dead! I called the ambulance, they're on their way—everyone! Everyone, back away!"

Naruto slumped, still shocked, and allowed Gaara to limply drag him back a bit as their manager bent down to affirm her hunch. Indeed, the ebony-haired stranger was alive, though the injury to the head was worrisome. Tsunade unbuttoned her poncho and threw it over him to protect the body from the relentless wind, which blew and howled and forced everyone to flee to warmth indoors.

Evidently, the winds thought the it was all a good joke.

"Naruto," Gaara said tonelessly over Naruto's blubbering, "Naruto, calm down. What happened?"

"He _bumped into me_," the addressed blond mumbled, leaning in a bit too close for Gaara's comfort. In fact, the hairstylist had—subconsciously of course, as he definitely was not aware of what he was doing—put his head on the redhead's shoulder and had an iron grip on the hairstylist's upper arm. "He… bumped into me. Oh my god, I'm a murderer!"

_Here we go again…_ Gaara thought to himself, though let no emotion seep into his face, even when Naruto tried to snuggle (the redhead instinctively stiffened and nudged him away with a hand). _Naruto, the drama king_.

"Coming through! Medical Student coming through—Naruto, get your ass out of the way!" Sakura, who had found the first-aid kit from underneath the desk, came running out in flip-flops and shorts and let out a short squeal at the first contact of cold. A tad embarrassed, she shot an angry glare at those who dared to stare at her before bending down to check the brunette's wound, falling into a heated discussion with Tsunade in hushed tones.

The blond was still frantic. "I killed someone!"

Gaara, in an authoritative tone: "Naruto, _calm down_."

The piercing wail of a siren came screeching down the corner, startling the staff and customers who had remained outside and, more importantly, awaking the brunette laying on the sidewalk momentarily. Tsunade and Sakura immediately pinned the man down on either side when he tried to move, earning a string of mumbled curses—in Japanese—from the injured party.

"Please, sir, don't move, we're getting you to safety as soon as we can."

"I'm disinfecting the wound!"

"'M gonna get 'zat guy… gonna get him…" The flailing brunette twisted and turned and gnawed before, finally, seizing his struggles and resolving to lay limp on the sidewalk, eyes unfocused and hazy. Gaara, who had finally given up on closing the blond's mouth and had decided to carefully shove the younger hairstylist inside, stood contemplating over the man's face.

Elegantly curved eyebrows; long lashes; pale, ivory skin; sharp, noble-like nose and set, stubborn lips—his face looked unnervingly familiar. Before the quiet man could pinpoint the exact source of nostalgia, however, the ambulance had come into view.

A cream-white truck decorated with an assortment of red emergency symbols cautiously parked as close as it could to the walkway, before two doctors—presumably; no one except Sakura knew their official title—carried out a board and carefully lifted the injured brunette onto it. A third doctor stood by the sidelines questioning Tsunade about the circumstances.

Within a few minutes—and a salute from on of the doctors—the anonymous man was carted into the ambulance and gone. It was if the incident never happened.

There was a momentary pause among those who were still left standing; even Sakura, who was shivering in her shorts, took a minute to think. Finally, Tsunade broke the ice and gathered back her poncho.

"Someone clean up this blood," she snapped, whirling on her heels and click-clacking back into the store, "Nothing to see! Everybody, move!"

"Uchiha Sasuke." Gaara said suddenly, startling a certain pink-haired secretary-slash-medical-student beside him. Even standing in a t-shirt and jeans, he didn't appear to be even moderately affected by the cold—his face was as blank as ever. He turned towards the secretary sharply.

"Uchiha Sasuke, pop star. He's released two albums so far, with the second album being an immediate hit. He is also a model, I suppose. I've seen his face in magazines."

"Magazines? Gaara, you read _magazines_?" Sakura couldn't help but feel skeptical. Gaara? Reading magazines? Like a _normal human being_?

"Beauty magazines." The man replied, before regarding her strangely. "Because of my job."

"Beauty magazines," Sakura repeated, before deciding to go inside.

_New gossip to tell to the ladies, _she says to herself.

-o-o-o-o-

Order quickly resumed after Naruto was given a good speaking-to from Tsunade herself—dragged into the back room by the ear while still blubbering about being a murderer was enough to catch even the attention of Neji, who had, after a while, carefully chosen to ignore the commotion so that he wouldn't possibly drag the Hyuuga Company into the mess.

"I can't believe that happened!"

"Naruto, shut up, it's not cute anymore!"

"What if he sues me?"

"Stop being so melodramatic, you're drawing too much attention to yourself!"

"When I was in elementary school I accidentally knocked down my teacher, what if—"

"Naruto!"

A wise choice on the Hyuuga's part—the newspaper had come within an hour, along with Hinata's frantic, blubbering journalist-of-a-husband whose first priority was to make sure that this so-called "murderer who attacked a passerby by head butting the other man" didn't harm his little coochy-coo.

No doubt that his original intentions were probably to kiss and hug and do other what Neji labeled "nasty" things. The threatening snarl Neji threw the quivering journalist was enough to scald him, however, and he just ended up patting Hinata's hand soothingly before running off to interview the "murderer".

Said "murderer" was still babbling in the backroom—at least, until Tsunade smacked him across the face and threatened to dump paper-mache on him. Just the prospect of being covered head-to-toe in what seemed to be Gaara's favorite art medium quelled his whimpering, and he managed to stay silent while the blonde bubblegum-chewing manager click-clacked her away back and forth in front of him, angrily reprimanding him.

"The _hell_ were you doing? Waving your stupid arms up and down—look, Naruto, I've put up with your—your—well, your lack of professional expertise until now, but this is just unacceptable! Look at it out there!" she dragged Naruto to the door and let him peer at the mess of journalists interviewing the patrons before pulling him back, "I've put up with your drama and your jokes and your 'breaks' and I'm not saying it's bad but—but—"

She growled. "_Look_."

Tsunade cracked her knuckles before placing her hands on her hips, looking up at the ceiling and then down to her high-heeled shoes, as if the words were hard to roll off her tongue. "I just need you to… clean up your act, Naruto."

_Ouch_. Naruto said nothing…not that he wasn't paying attention. He just had nothing formidable to say in return.

Though his eyes were a bit downcast, the hairstylist shook his head and pulled on one of almost patented grins, giving Tsunade an affirmative nod. The woman regarded him strangely—heels clicking the floor and lips pursed togetherbefore leading her employee out of the backroom.

Immediately, the two were surrounded by journalists and a cameraman, and other bizarre people who just wanted to see what the commotion was all about.

"_Nothing _happened!" Tsunade roared over the questions and prodding and the _click, click, click _of the camera, causing several journalists who were a bit too close to jump back hurriedly. "There was _no foul play _involved, so go back to your little dusting cubbies, alright, boys? It was just an accident! Shoo! Shoo!"

"Ms. Sannin!" Hinata's husband held a thick notepad in his arms, "Ms. Sannin, is it true that after beating up Mr.… Uchiha, I think—Shino, it was Uchiha right? Right—after beating up Mr. Uchiha, Mr. Uzamaki came in and threatened your patrons?"

"_I already told you, there was NO FOUL PLAY INVOLVED_," The woman screeched before physically shoving the group of what she considered too-bored Japanese newspaper staff out the door and into the streets, "Good bye! Good riddance! And if I catch you printing any crap in that damn newspaper of yours, I'll personally hunt down every man on your team and break every last bone in their body understand? _You understand me_?"

The group had already—wisely—fled down the streets, dropping a pen or notebook or two in their scramble. Tsunade slammed the door shut behind her, startling a certain manicurist who had chosen to hide under his desk the moment Naruto had burst in covered in—covered in—_blood_. Haku, a quiet Japanese immigrant who spoke little English, was often peaceful and kind and generally _brave_, so it was odd for him to be hiding. Though not _that_ odd.

Haku seemed to have only three fears: too much English, loud noises, and blood. All of which had been present in the commotion. Sakura blew a reassuring kiss at the older man, mouthing: "_It's okay, nothing bad happened_" in Japanese.

As mentioned before, order quickly resumed. After a scathing glare from the woman to all the employees—Gaara, who had just come back from outside, pointedly ignored her; Sakura, who had immediately picked up the phone to gossip with her other friends, put down the receiver with a pout; Naruto, who had returned to his work station and acted as if nothing had happened, looked at her questionably; and Haku, who was… who was still hiding behind his desk… continued to hide behind his desk—the woman returned to her work station.

"I need some more sake," she growled at no one in particular, hand itching to close around the neck of a wine bottle, "and I'm _still hungry, _dammit! Naruto—no, wait. Better not send the blond idiot out with those newspaper folks on the loose. Sakura!" The pink-haired medical student looked up from her "accounting" (more than likely she was sneaking games of solitaire, Tsunade knew), alert.

"Yes?"

"Go get us some lunch. _Kami-sama_, what time is it?" She sorted through a mess of bubble-gum wrappers, old shoes and an assortment of rubber bands and receipts before finding and squinting at her Hello Kitty digital alarm clock. She swore. "Go _now_, it's ten minutes until lunch time ends! Go, go, go!"

The secretary sighed, but thought better than to question her superior. Tugging on a _huge_ faux fur overcoat which Gaara had stared at with large, green eyes when she'd brought it in that morning, she left the store with a little click from her boots and peace returned to the store.

Relative peace.

_Just clean up your act, Naruto_.

Tsunade drummed her nails on her desk, peering at the blond anxiously. It seemed that he'd quickly bounced back—he was back to his schoolboy tricks and antics and was laughing just like before, but she couldn't help but feel that she had been a bit harsh. That, and Naruto was an expert and hiding his feelings, so damn her if she could figure out what he was really thinking.

Jiraiya had always teased that she was too soft on the blond—and he was right. It didn't feel good to dampen his mood, even if he didn't _act like_ anything was wrong.

The said blond was, at the moment, making great sport of ticking the back of Hinata's neck and cracking mirror jokes. The store was once again filled with shouts of: "Whaaaaat? Hinata-chan, shame, shame!" and "Gaaaaaara, what are you doing? Eeeew, _disinfectant_. What are you trying to do, pick up some girls? All the way, man!"

Naruto finally finished up the woman's cut and, after tugging the little safety-bib off and giving her a mirror, gave her a princely bow.

"My queen." he murmured jokingly, kissing her fingers, and Hinata had the decency to giggle and blush.

"Naruto, my cousin is a married woman." Neji said pointedly, again waiting. Gaara was off obsessively disinfecting his hands; if he had been in the room at the moment, the redhead would have given the blond a delicate frown, something Naruto would have interpreted as "Stop being so unprofessional."

Though it didn't quite occur to Naruto that the older man only seemed to frown like that whenever the blond was flirting with his female—and sometimes male—customers.

"Oh, _come oooooon_, Neji, you know I'm joking!" Naruto flung his hands up innocently, large grin stretched across his face. Despite his self-proclaimed chastity, however, he made a great show of peering at the woman's behind and winking when Hinata turned to leave. Neji gave him a dirty look—brows furrowed, nose flared—and scoffed, evidently deciding that he was _above_ Naruto's jokes.

Gaara finally returned from the bathroom, crimson hair a bit mussed and eyes looking a bit more worn than usual. His hands reeked of disinfectant and hand-sanitizer, the only indication of Gaara's franticness of ridding himself of the smell and sight of blood.

Seeing as Sakura had immediately run indoors due to the cold, Naruto was blubbering, Haku was hiding behind his desk and Tsunade had been off drinking elixir, the redhead was the only one who had been responsible enough to kindly clean up the blood on the pavement, even if he was probably the most hemaphobic of the five staff members.

Oh, that was just like Gaara. That man had an odd suspiciousness of blood, just like Haku, something that Naruto couldn't help but giggle over a bit. It was quite funny to think that it had probably been a courageous feat on the redhead's part. _The _non-human Sabaku Gaara. Cleaning up blood from the pavement was just _so _horrifying, it seemed.

The redhead threw the still laughing blond scathing glare, wiping his hand on a washcloth and tossing back a strand of fluttering hair that had been caught in his eye. The look effectively quieted Naruto, and suddenly he knew that Gaara knew. He knew what Tsunade had been discussing with the blond in the backroom, and he easily looked past all of the stylist's charades.

Those bluish-green eyes silently accusing him were unsettling.

Gaara continued to organize his work space in a meticulous, slightly mechanical manner, and Neji was content to let the clacking sounds of brushes being put away and bottles being taken out to lull him, until the redhead asked him quietly a question.

"Are you alright?"

Neji flinched, startled.

Sabaku Gaara rarely displayed any amount of emotion for anything—or anyone, for that matter—mostly keeping to himself and moving about in an odd routinely fashion, and, truth be told, the Hyuuga was horrified.

Realizing that he'd reacted—in a very unprofessional way, the Hyuuga added to himself—he attempted to cover up and coughed. "What do you mean?"

"When you came in," Gaara whispered, in a slow and steady voice, eyes not blinking, "you had a bad air surrounding you. You are often cold and aloof, yet today you seemed downcast. This is not normal. It is the job of a hairstylist to make sure his or her patron leaves happy, and you are not happy and will probably still not be happy once I am done. Thus, it is of my concern." It would have been a bit touching, if the redhead wasn't so boringly monotone.

_What was this guy, a hippy? _No, erase that thought. Gaara had always been peculiar.

He didn't often commute with his customers, and, if he did, it must be extremely important. Neji had the heart to at least feel a tad flattered.

Even so…

"Y-yes, I'm fine. I'm just having a bit of a bad day, after all." The brunette raised his chin up stiffly, eyes defiant. The redhead paused, face blank, before skillfully tugging off the towel-turban and pulling out a spray bottle, blow-dryer and a pair of glinting, menacing scissors.

Neji eyed these tools suspiciously.

"Those are…?"

"To cut your hair."

The businessman looked at the incredulous objects scathingly. "…those aren't what you usually use to cut my hair."

Gaara experimentally ruffled through Neji's curls (they evidently curled when wet), letting wet locks fly wherever. He narrowed his eyes, contemplating, in the mirror. "I'm not giving you your usual haircut."

Neji whirled as far as he could go with someone's hand in his hair, eyes wide. He clenched his jaw. "Excuse me?"

"I'm not giving you your usual haircut."

"I did not ask for a different haircut."

Gaara narrowed his eyes, furrowed brow creating dark shadows on his face. "I'm not giving you your usual haircut."

The two bore holes in each other's heads for a good moment; Neji quaking slightly as if entirely shocked by Gaara's "unprofessional" demand (though, in some respects, Gaara was not being unprofessional at all), while Gaara remained passive and emotionless. His eyes, though, were a different matter entirely.

Finally, the Hyuuga gave an infuriated huff and turned away from the mirror. If Gaara thought giving him a new haircut would fix his problems, _fine. _Whatever.

_He_ was the professional here, not Neji. Neji was just some stupid businessman who dealt with interstate finance and didn't know the proper dynamics of hair. Anyway, he could always sue later if he didn't like whatever the stylist was doing to his hair. Or, at least, demand a refund.

Neji found great consolation in these two options.

-o-o-o-o-

Naruto, who was done with his clients until the evening rush and had unconventionally thrown off his shirt from underneath his apron—despite his reprimanding from Tsunade; in fact, the blond acted as if the whole event had seriously _not occurred_— spun around in one of the salon chairs with a brilliant smile as he watched those _deft _hands at work.

Carefully gathering back some of that brownish black hair between his fingers, he swiftly and expertly cut the ends, released, gathered more hair, cut. At times, he'd back away, see his work, then resume, brows furrowing deeply over greenish-blue eyes.

Watching Gaara was always _spastastic_, as Naruto said (even though he'd been reprimanded more than once that "spastastic" wasn't a real word). Though Naruto himself knew he had quite a unique style in his work, he wasn't nearly as fast, as deft, or as _sure_ as Gaara when it came to snipping the hair of people who were in a hurry.

The blonde needed a relaxed environment and a customer who was willing to sit still for an hour in order for his talent to shine through, which proved to be a rather crippling weakness. On some level, he, in a very light manner, envied the redhead.

_Gaara_ would never have his ass dragged into the backroom so the manager would tell him to "clean up his act". Gaara's act was as _damn_ clean as those weird disinfected hands of his, maybe even cleaner. As far as the blond was concerned, the redhead's career was _spotless._

He wouldn't crash into strangers, freak out, become an utter nuisance, have no responsibility whatsoever, whine… damn, Naruto, stop thinking about it! You're going to get yourself depressed! Remember the rule! Remember the rule!

_Don't sulk until you get home. Save your face for later, Uzamaki!_

Despite the rule, however, the blond became suddenly and painfully self-conscious. Naruto couldn't help but let his eyes drift to two cuts on his forefinger and one on the thumb of his opposite hand. Rubbing them gingerly, he sighed, though kept the smile on his face. Again, he had rushed himself in order to catch up with his fellow stylist, and ended up almost snipping the appendages off of his hands.

His inability to work within a time constraint infuriated him at times.

His mistakes left angry red marks all over his palms, joining the rest of the scars he'd collected over the years, drawn all across his wrists and even lower arm. Discreetly, he peered at Gaara's hands as they worked and maneuvered their way through Neji's fine, Asian hair, suddenly noting how soft they looked. Lithe, and pale. No scars.

Damn that professional.

Now that he was actually observing the redhead himself, and not what he was doing, he couldn't help but let his eyes roam a bit: beautifully styled dark reddish hair, on the verge of a pale auburn; very Asian, very vivid eyes which straddled the line between blue and green; a pale, yellowish skin tone which further accented the eyeliner drawn around his eyes and contrasted sharply against his hair. The eyeliner was odd, but his hair was so pretty.

Naruto licked his lips.

Smooth maroon apron, white t-shirt, black Capri-pants that clung onto his legs. His eyes looked a bit sunken underneath his brow; his lips were chapped and white, and looked as if they'd been chewed.

Naruto wondered—briefly—what chewing Gaara's lips would be like.

Just the thought—and the implications—of the action made the blond feel suddenly light-headed.

Despite his allure, however, the blond worried over the older man. He was Very Skinny (as opposed to Medium Build). He had no eyebrows (though Naruto had convinced himself that he'd shaved them off, and it wasn't simply… natural). His skin tended to look a bit unhealthy at times, and he either blinked very rapidly or very slowly, as if he hadn't had enough sleep.

This then lead to Naruto wondering what would happen if he covered Gaara in a blanket and hugged him. Would his skin turn pinkish from the warmth? Would he stop blinking weirdly? Would he stop giving him weird looks whenever he got snuggly-snuggly with a customer? (Wait, so when did Naruto know that Gaara was giving him weird looks?)

The blond would have investigated further on this with his eyes, if the said eyes didn't eventually meet up with Gaara's own green-blue ones.

Gaara was staring straight at the other hairdresser, face still as expressionless as ever, yet mouth twitching upwards in an almost _bemused_ expression. His hands had momentarily paused in handling his client's hair, caught in mid-cut.

"What is it?"

Naruto paused, working his mouth. His mind took a few precious moments to process the fact that he'd been _caught_.

He blushed violently, magenta flooding into his cheeks as he took a frantic step backwards: "No, I just… er, was wondering what you were, like, doing, 'cause, well you're kind of better than me so I wanted to see how you… um, no, actually you're _much_ better than me, so I was looking at you 'cause, er, I wanted to learn… no… wait, actually, in all truth there's a—there's… something.. a stain, yeah—right there, see? No wait, the alcohol must have wiped it away, ahaha…"

And before he could make more of a fool of himself—even _Neji_ was staring at him—he made some weird comment about needing to piss really badly ("Er, it feels like I'm going to go all fountain-y on you in a moment, so I'm gonna, like, go fountain elsewhere") and ran off to the bathroom so he could try and calm down his blush.

Gaara blinked very, very slowly. His arms were still frozen in the midst of cutting Neji's hair, and, though he looked rather stony on the outside, he was completely baffled within.

"Looks like someone's very interested," Neji murmured softly, and would have chuckled mysteriously if not for the growing anxiety rising in his chest about what Gaara was doing to his hair. What was all this tin foil? "Maybe you should go talk to him about it."

Gaara's facial expression was blank, devoid of all emotion. It was almost like he didn't understand, but one never knew with the quiet redhead.

"Guys!" Sakura burst in, her face a brilliant shade of pale blue and framed with a ring of faux fur, "It's _so_ cold outside! I've got the lunches! Here, Manager, I'll put them on the counter. Naru—hm?" The secretary blinked a while, "Where's Naruto?"

"Naruto," Gaara said tonelessly, "is… fountaining."

"…excuse me?"

-o-o-o-o-

Umino Iruka stood contemplating at his desk, peering through his years-old records of stylists, beauticians, makeup-artists and other such people that had passed under his scrutiny over the years of his teaching career. It was quite late at night, really, and the professor would have long gone to bed if he wasn't busy worrying over Sasuke's potential hairstylist.

That boy had always held a place in his heart—his age and isolation reminded him so of his adopted son, though it had become clear that their personalities were radically different.

Whatever the reason, Iruka had looked at records forced himself to remember faces, personalities, expertise. Kakashi had come home for the past week complaining of Sasuke's complaints, and Iruka carefully sorted these out as he contemplated over some _potentials_.

Truthfully, the brunette had to admit, the minute he'd heard that Sasuke was looking for a stylist, he'd first thought of pairing the man up with his adoptive son. It was wistful thinking—the two of them had gotten along quite well in elementary school, but then had their painful differences during middle school and, eventually, went to different high schools. Sasuke had a good musical career backing him up, majoring in Music Theory and minoring in computer sciences; his adoptive son, on the other hand… well…

Iruka never really had the heart to push Naruto to go to college if he didn't want to.

Though working with a professional model may just have been the motivation that blond needed to finally enroll in a beauty college and gain that air of professionalism true stylists demanded, he knew that Sasuke himself would only suffer from being dragged down by him. No, Iruka couldn't do that.

Most of the old students he'd at first considered for Sasuke had secure jobs in top-class beauty salons in Beverly Hills and Hollywood California, positions they'd likely not be willing to give up just to help some rising pop star… slash model. In fact, looking at the current status of the majority of his students, most were in good positions in society or at least made enough money for them to be reluctant to move. Seeing their skill, it only made sense.

Filing back his oldest students' files—they were all well off, as Iruka had wished them to be—he turned more to his newer graduates, starting from five years ago.

It was then that he hit jackpot.

He stared at the incredulous file disbelievingly, and then looked at his computer screen to check the stylist's current position. Amazing. Baffling. Iruka's top student four years ago—who, he knew, could have easily gotten in a Beverly Hill Salon or worked at Hollywood—held such a low position in comparison to the rest of his graduating class that Iruka's heart almost stopped.

It was almost too good to be true (no, Iruka was not happy that his student was relatively poor; he was happy at the fact that by matching him and Sasuke together, both of them could rise to success together).

Writing the name down in his plan-book, he finally shut the laptop and closed the lights. The flat seemed eerily silent—_hollow_—and the brown-haired man pattered quietly down carpeted halls and into the bedroom, door emitting a creak as he entered. Kakashi lay curled up on his side, long ago asleep, and the younger man observed the agent carefully with fondness.

He collapsed onto his side of the bed, hair spilling out in curls and onto the sheets. Removing his night robe so that he was in his pajamas, he slipped under the covers and lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling.

Looking back at his students and their status in current time, Iruka's felt so… _old_. Though at thirty-nine, it wasn't like he was walking on a cane. Kakashi was already forty and over and still looked good.

But that was because he was Kakashi. Kakashi always looked good.

"Sweet dreams." he murmured—for Kakashi or himself he didn't know. Either way, however, it made him feel better, and he let sleep cradle his mind and drag him into its watery depths, not to be returned until the bitter cold morning tomorrow.

-o-o-o-o-

AN: This chapter... was pulled through, like, _six_ re-edittings, all because I was never satisified with a certain scene (I'm still not satisified but it's the best I can make it).

Anyway, I seriously appreciate your reviews! They make me blush, actually XD. However, I do want to say that if I accidentally "use" an idea you suggested in a review without creditting you in my story, I am not using your idea. More than likely, I already thought up that scene in my head and we just happened to conincide. I apologize beforehand if we have any disagreements! If I do use your idea, I'll credit you in the AN

As for the responses to reviews: I do tend to be a bit feminine when I write through characters... I apologize if that disturbs anyone. And the girl-bashing was Sasuke's inner thoughts, not mine XD. I'm glad that many of you liked my "Breaking the Music" story (written all last year DX. Guh). I hope you like this one, too, but that is just hope XD. I can't make you like it.

Thanks for reading!


	3. Three

Konoha Hair and Nail salon

--by Flightangel

-o-o-o-o-

3

-o-o-o-o-

A group of Japanese, haggard and tired, scuttled across the airport lobby, heads bowed, gray and anxiously wishing to detract attention from themselves. One adult, presumably their father or some other family relative, rounding up three children—one sleeping on his back and the other two tightly holding hands. Bustling Americans ignored these newfound immigrants, and the Japanese did not mind, either.

They squatted together at the baggage claim, jittery, nervous—as if afraid that someone had followed them to this new country. As quick as they can, they lugged their worn and faded luggage out into the rainy streets. The adult stood contemplating outside, child still draped over his back.

Briefly, he peered back to the airport, the planes, the only real connection now to his home country, miles and miles away. There was still a chance to go back—back to Japan. Perhaps it had been a bad idea after all. Did he really need to flee so far? It might have been a better idea to move to a different island, maybe to Okinawa or Shikoku or something.

A sudden car speeded past them, spraying water across their faces, as if spitting. _Welcome to our country, foreigners._

One of the standing children began to cry.

No, he couldn't go back. Not now. Not after going so far. The visas had already been made; the company was expecting him in a week, no more, and he couldn't delay. _Wouldn't_ delay.

Carefully, the man led the children across the safety path into the parking lot, never to turn back to Japan ever again.

-o-o-o-o-

Naruto laid on his back, sprawled across his couch with a foot in the lamp shade and his head lolling off the armrest, speaking rapidly on the phone. Thankfully, unlike many ventilation systems across the city, his heater was up and running and he was warm enough to be caught wearing a thin long-sleeve and some black rolled-up pants.

His apartment was small and cramped and full of junk, though not uncomfortable or impossible to live in. A bedroom plastered with posters of his favorite models—and their well-done hairdos—crammed with a small twin-bed covered in clothes, vanity table complete with a mannequin and an assortment of wigs, more clothes stuffed in the closet, and some magazines and comics books lying about the floor. A small dirty kitchen with some half-cleaned dishes and ramen bowls sat close to a tiny living room area, room enough for only a single couch and television. The bathroom wasn't even worth mentioning.

"—and, _no_, I didn't know it was Sasuke, okay?" the hairstylist groaned at whoever it was on the other line, left hand on his temple. "Of course I didn't recognize him! I haven't seen him since middle school! Back then he was two heads shorter and three inches fatter around his waistline and… stuff. And there was blood. I was freaking out!"

"Look, Sasuke isn't very appreciative of you crashing into—"

"_It was him who crashed into me!_"

Iruka, on the other end, sighed, hoisting the wireless phone to his shoulder as he effortlessly curled an old regular's hair. "—okay, okay, whatever you say, Naruto. Anyway, he isn't appreciative of it and neither is Kakashi—you do know who Kakashi is right?"

"The pervert."

"Right, the per—_Naruto_!"

"What?"

"Don't 'what' me!" Another audible sigh came through the connection, tickling the blond's conscience. Naruto winced and withdrew his foot from the lamp shade, seeing as the bulb was beginning to burn away his skin. "Anyway, Kakashi had to drag up some of his old favors to secure Sasuke's spot in a photo shoot uptown and he's not happy about it. He doesn't like begging."

"So?"

"_So,_ Mister 'Oh my god I am a murderer', I think that a little visit to our victim—_hn! He_ was the one hurt here, so he is the victim, regardless of who hit who or who bashed into who, you understand? God, it's been almost ten years since you've seen each other face-to-face, and you're still so high-hackled about him. Anyway, I think you should pay him a little visit. Apologize or something."

"_Apologize? _I told you already, it was _him_—"

"Naruto, you're twenty-four! You're old enough to know that regardless of who is to blame, one should always apologize! Remember Golden Rule Number Seven!"

Naruto growled deep in his throat, flipping his hair as he lolled his head on the arm rest. He hated the damn Golden Rules. _Hated._ A pot filled with ramen was gurgling, calling for attention, but the hairstylist was in no mood to get up from his position on the couch.

He gave the pot the finger.

"Naruto… Naruto, are you there?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm here." The man sat up, blonde hair flat and mussed against his head, scowl etched onto his face. "So you'll stop bugging me if I go and apologize? Look, I don't even know where the guy lives. It's been ten years. _Ten years._ He probably won't recognize me."

"If that makes you go and apologize, good! I mean… well, that's not the point. Just go and be a man—I know you two had this horrendous fight at graduation, but it _has_ been a decade—_a decade_! Treat him like a stranger if it makes you feel better." Though under normal circumstances the professor would have opposed such looseness, Iruka sounded worn—faded. Naruto would've spent a moment feeling guilty if the pot didn't begin boiling over.

Apparently, it didn't quite appreciate getting flicked at.

"Ho—_shit!_"

"Naruto?"

The blond fumbled with the phone. "I'll call you back later, 'kay? My dinner's come to life!"

Before the teacher could say anything smart—"Naruto? What do you mean it's come to life? Have you been watching too much Veggie Tales?"—the phone was tossed carelessly onto the carpet and the stylist let fly a stream of raucous cursing, hand scalded when he tried to turn the stove off through a stream of boiling water. Throwing the injured appendage into the water, he eyed the soupy mess-of-a-ramen sulkily.

Maybe he should've just ordered take-out.

-o-o-o-o-

Temari didn't quite like to be up at four thirty in the morning, but it wasn't as if she had a choice.

The air outside was a deep shade of violet and chilling, seeping through cracks in the window, ghosting walls, and scaring plants stiff and white. An unwisely hung clothesline between the apartments sat abandoned, panties and shirts hanging stiffly on the frozen cord.

No birds dared perch in the winter chill and, instead, huddled in nests in dead and lifeless trees, eagerly anticipating a far-away spring. Many other life forms were hidden, under the snow—hibernating. If only humans were allowed to hibernate, too.

The blonde woman buried herself in her large blankets, snuggling into her bed. _Nooo…. Damn clock. Don't wanna get up yet._ The heater had broken, _had been_ broken, and it was cold, colder than snow inside the house. She would've drifted off if the not-so-quiet patter of feet in the halls had not come ringing down from the left and down into the kitchen, awakening her in the process.

_Gah. I'm going to _kill _him. Stupid Kankuro and his big _stupid_ feet._

By four forty-five, all members of the Sabaku household were mandated to be awake and running, regardless of circumstances. If not, Yashamaru made you hold pails of water outside in the cold with nothing but your pajamas on. If you still refused to awaken, he'd get out his swat.

"_Ohayo_," the aforementioned uncle said quietly whilst sitting in a kitchen chair, vying to eat on the counter than on the table. This may have been because he was in a hurry, but, seeing how the other members of the family were also sitting in various places on the counter, it was most likely the result of the various folders and magazines and junk spilling over the table.

"_Ohayo_," a bulky brown-haired man responded with a yawn. Only Japanese was spoken between the family members, at all times, anywhere, whatever the circumstances. A bowl of cereal tipped treacherously in his hands as sleepiness teased his mind, resulting in a sort of sub-conscious loll.

His slumped posture suggested a slightly beefy body type, face dominated by a prominent nose and fierce knitted eyebrows. His appearance often gave people the impression of a mostly educated but still powerful man—but, like most people, he didn't quite look his best in the morning. He just looked… droopy.

Temari stared at the swiveling spoon with a pucker between her eyebrows. He better not spill that. _She_ wasn't going to get the mop and bucket out this time.

"Kankuro, hurry up eating, we have to leave in ten minutes. Don't just sit there. Gaara, do you have your bag ready? Gaara?" The redhead was nowhere to be seen. Yashamaru raised his voice, "Gaara, you're going to have to do Temari's hair on the car, so get ready. Kankuro, wake up, _wake up_, your milk's spilling." In the Sabaku household, morning was a quick affair.

Temari cleaned her bowl and quickly threw it in the sink, washing her hands in the orange-ish water before running to find her purse.

The apartment was a royal mess—with Gaara off at his work or flat and the rest of the family being carted around by Temari's photo-shoots and advertisement filming, there was little time for someone to actually come in and mop the place up. The dishes were dirty; laundry was scattered about the couches, tables, beds and floor; the heater and sink were broken; there were cracks in the windows and mildew in the bathroom—Temari didn't even dare look in the closets. The mold might _eat_ her.

Using her remaining milliseconds left to stuff a granola bar into her mouth, Temari glared daggers at Kankuro, who was still eating his cereal and taking his precious time. Didn't he understand that she had to get to work by six? _Six_?

Thankfully, Yashamaru saved them some effort by sharply knocking on the counter, calling the man's attention back from la-la land. Kankuro gave out a low, guttural groan before slurping up the last of the soggy granola and flinging the bowl in the pile of dirty dishes. He pulled his hoodie over his head, as if the darkness of the cloth would sooth his morning daze.

The stars were still out, twinkling at them madly. As if they were _laughing_. Temari threw the finger up at the sky before wrapping her coat around her figure tightly, sucking in breath. _Kami-sama, _it was cold. Her franticness to get in the damn car was momentarily quelled by the freeze.

Gaara, dressed in a black t-shirt over a white long-sleeve, had a bag slung across his shoulders and effortlessly walked out, unaffected. The blonde wasn't convinced by the little "cool" charade, however.

Gaara hated the cold.

Even now, Temari was close enough to see the goose bumps on his arms, and it almost made her giggle. In fact, she _did_ giggle. Gaara narrowed his eyes at her and promptly stalked through the garden and into the car, shoulders hunched up. As if showing Temari how just because it was thirty degrees outside it didn't mean the family could _slow down._

Kankuro lumbered after his sister, bag of formal clothes slung over his shoulder, followed by their dear uncle, who smartly snapped the door behind them all and chased them all inside the van, regardless of the cold.

Life in the car was a frantic _mess_.

"Temari, sit straight, don't move." Yashamaru called from the front of the car before flipping on his cellphone to immediately begin confirming Temari's day plans with various producers, switching to English. Though he was usually a very patient man, his stick-up-his-ass side tended to appear whenever he was speaking to what he considered "difficult Americans". Not that _he_ was being the one difficult. Oh, no. It was always _them_.

Temari sat completely still, eyes unblinking as Kankuro dusted on blush, applied lipstick, swabbed eye shadow. Gaara, behind her, kept spraying something on her mussed hair in short little spurts. It was quite annoying.

"No, no, I know I planned her viewing to be at three in the afternoon, not three thirty. No? No openings? Okay, okay, maybe I'll get in her in by two thirty, how about that? Is that any better?"

"Gaara, what are you doing?"

No response—just more spraying, and a comb. Right, like she really was expecting her brother to say something. She wriggled her nose when the older of her younger brothers accidentally dusted blush up her nostrils, and flared them to emphasis her discomfort. Kankuro bowed his head, partially in apology but mostly in defiance, as if he was saying, _hey, give me a break, it's five in the _fucking _morning_. Temari huffed.

"You have those photos, yes? The ones from Friday's photo session down in that dratted photo place, what was it called…? Anyway, I have to have them in by tomorrow morning, so please, _please_ put them on my station desk before five this afternoon, thank you, thank you, _arigatou gozaimasu_. Wait, I have another person on the other line—" A quick fumble. "—Iruka? Umino Iruka? Yes, _yes_, of course I remember—how long has it been?"

Gaara was done long before Kankuro and sat in the backseat flipping through some of the beauty magazines he'd brought with him from the apartment, to add to his collection at the salon. Pausing on a particular page, he blankly stared at the model looking at him from the plastic before turning it around and showing it to Kankuro, who had redone Temari's lips twice because of the bumpy car ride.

Kankuro squinted at the image, his own lips pursing as he tried, for the third time, to perfectly "enhance" the natural perkiness of his sister's lips. Damn gloss kept _smudging_.

"Nah, doesn't fit your face." Gaara retrieved the page and continued to stare at it. He self-consciously brought his own pale hand to his hair a few times, furrowed brows creating dark shadows over exhausted eyes. The bags troubled Kankuro greatly; Gaara had been getting adequate sleep for weeks until the day before last Tuesday, when his sleeping fits started again.

"Here, Gaara, come over here, I'll put some concealer on you."

The redhead escaped as far as he could from the Styrofoam stick the brother had waved in front of his face, eying the thing with wide green eyes. Kankuro sighed. Oh, _right_. His little brother believed that foundation and makeup gave you _cancer_.

"Well, it'll be hard to convince him, you know. After that Schmitz incident two years ago, Gaara hasn't been upstage at all, except for doing Temari's hair, but she's his sister. You don't know what happened?" Yashamaru had long switched back to Japanese and swerved as a crazy jaywalker tried to kill himself in front of his car. Damn crazy Californians. "Well, long story short—this was just six months after he graduated, remember—Gaara did some guy's hair, the guy went to a modeling session, the guy's hair got caught in the ventilation, he had to go the hospital, he sued Gaara—"

Temari's impatient hands signaled her brother to hand her a mirror—which he tossed at her and "accidentally" hit her in the chest—and she stared at her reflection critically, turning her face this way and that.

"—sure, he lost, but Gaara was just so angry at the fact that someone had dared accuse him of wrongdoing he just left. Quit his job at that Beverly Hills salon, what was it called? Juan Juan? Yeah, he quit and didn't go back. I know, _I know_, I've tried to convincing him, but Gaara's like—" he lowered his voice, "—like a child sometimes, he's _so_ stubborn—"

"Gaara, what's this?" she pointed at a lump of blonde frizz at the back of head, left side. Her wide, make-up emphasized eyes stared at the lump angrily. The redhead the blonde model no mind, continuing to flip through his magazine. When his sister made a move to fix it, however, his hand slapped hers away abruptly.

"Leave it."

"Gaara!"

"—It's been a year and a half already, and he's got to learn that pro's deal with lawsuits _all the time_. Actually, now that I think of it, I don't even know why Gaara cares. I don't even think it's about the lawsuit anymore, really. But, alright, I'll let you talk to him—wait a moment, _Gaara_." Yashamaru slowed the car down so he could spare the time to look back at his youngest nephew, who was angrily pushing back Temari's frantic hands. Apparently, he felt quite strong about leaving his "works-of-art" as they were. "Gaara, it's Iruka, he wants to talk to you."

The redheaded hairstylist regarded his uncle blankly, hands locking his sister's in an iron hold. Kankuro sat hunched over next to Temari with his hoodie back on, as if hiding in the darkness would detract attention away from the spasmatic redheaded devil-of-a-hair-tugger. "Who's Iruka?"

"Iruka! Your beauty college professor, don't you remember? Brown-haired man, tannish skin, scar over his nose…? Oh, right, he wasn't your _direct _professor, that was Baki, but you knew him, because I met him during orientation, you see? Here, talk to him, he has a job offer to give you."

"Job offer?" Gaara repeated questionably, though his face was passive. Again, he didn't seem to care, though his surrounding family did, evidently. Temari paused in her struggles to fix her hair and Kankuro turned around, face through his hoodie attentive. Of all the three, it was fact to say that Gaara made the least out of all of them, though seeing as they all lived together, it didn't make much of a difference. Actually, that wasn't quite true.

Gaara had a small flat up the street from his current workplace at the Konoha Hair and Nail Salon, which he bunked at when he worked too late or was angry at his siblings, a rare incident. Even though he _did_ make the least out of three, he was the only one who had to pay two sets of water and electricity bills every month and to buy food for himself and Kankuro's ravenous pit-of-a-stomach. It wasn't as if he never received job offers. Temari got gracious compliments on her hair all the time.

The aforementioned redhead easily caught the cellphone tossed at him and put it up to his ear. His voice was neutral.

"My uncle said something about a job offer...?"

-o-o-o-o-

Iruka never knew why or how Sasuke and Naruto had, as Kakashi kindly put it, "split up".

To him, it seemed like in one minute the two went from cheerily playing with each other to disregarding the other's presence. The cold air between the two was terrifying.

The professor had, from years of musing, pinpointed the central turn in relations to graduation day, right after the ceremony. The two had briefly disappeared behind the building when Naruto insisted on chasing a crow who'd stolen his graduation hat, Sasuke reluctantly following him. After a while, Iruka and Itachi—who had stood off to the side looking bored with the world—heard raised voices and shouts before a clearly upset Naruto ran behind Iruka and urged him to leave early.

Sasuke had an even darker cloud about him when he reappeared, lip bloody. Evidently, there had been a fist fight, too.

After that, everything was just like… _puuuuuft_. Sasuke was angry at Naruto and Naruto was angry at Sasuke and no matter what anyone said, the two wouldn't reconcile. Not even with the prodding of Iruka and Kakashi and even Itachi (on one level) would the two even speak to one another. The distance grew wider and wider as the two entered high school and college—Sasuke, anyway; Naruto didn't go to college—and eventually it became a taboo subject.

You just didn't _speak _about the other in the presence of one of the two men. It just wasn't done.

-o-o-o-o-

"Screw you, Uchiha! _Screw you!_!"

A hairbrush was thrown into the air and valiantly collided with the door of a small cottage surrounded by cold and stiff and lifeless trees, staring quite blankly at its attacker. If the below freezing winds hadn't made itself so prevalent today, the blond would have added "car door" and "hairspray" to the list of objects he was trying to vandalize his middle-school buddy's house with—vandalize, with little success.

That cottage door was _damn_ strong.

Roaring, the man bent down and hauled a large piece of snow-mud-ice off the edge of the brunette's lawn, grunting as he tried to shoulder a good grip. Waddling up the porch, he proudly used the quickly crumbling piece to attempt entry into the house, with no avail. What the hell was this door _made of_?

Uzamaki "Umino" Naruto wasn't tardy to work often, despite a notorious record of tardiness in his high school years. In fact, he tried to remain steadily on time and ready, to avoid contact with the manager's brutal fists and sharp tongue. He didn't like getting jabbed at.

Thus, it was a rare occasion for Naruto to be late, and, as the blond was currently gnashing his teeth about at the moment, for no good reason.

The damn Uchiha wasn't even _home_.

"Screw you! Screw you! I hope you go to effing _hell_!" Naruto screamed as loud as he could, giving up his intrusion effort and throwing the chunks of snow-mud-ice onto the ground, effectively dirtying up the once spotless porch. Ha. Ha. Ha. The blond fervently wished the brunette would have to clean that up himself.

Grumbling, he stalked down the porch steps and back up again, eyebrows furrowed and lips stretched taunt in annoyance. He had the childish urge to graffiti the front of the man's house with some age-old orange spray paint he'd stolen years before, but he resisted. Graffiti would just get him arrested, and doing jail time wasn't going to quell his anger.

Squatting down on the steps—carefully, there was still snow spattered about—he irritably brushed specks of dead grass root off of his black pants, eying the now dirty piece of clothing mournfully. He liked these pants. _Screw_ the Uchiha. This was his fault, too.

Maybe he should leave a note behind. Maybe a phone number… no, not a phone number, he didn't even want to hear the guy's _voice_. Just a note, stuck near his door, a quick apology. When Iruka told him to apologize, he didn't exclude written apologies, right?

Feeling the cold through his now wet gloves, he tore the articles off and threw them in to his car, leaning in through the opened window to rummage through his glove box. The little compartment was filthy—filled with old gum, gum wrappers, cup ramen (how'd that get in there?), instruction manuals, unfinished water bottles… oh, yes, notepad.

Hands now stiff and shaking from the cold, he unsteadily wrote, using a dull pencil he'd managed to fish out of his coat pocket, using the hood of his car as a prop:

_Sorry for crashing into you yesterday. Hope you feel better._

Short, anonymous and apologetic. Perfect.

The blond refused to admit that he just truly feared coming face-to-face with the other man—for so long, he's thought of Sasuke as that mildly good-looking middle school kid, and never revised his image though he knew he'd grown. Grown so much, in fact, that Naruto didn't even recognize him even after screaming over the guy's body for ten minutes or so.

Throwing his hands up to his mouth, he warmed up the chilled digits a moment before, still clutching the notes, stalking up to the door and looking for an area to stick the note in. He found the perfect container in the crack of the door, which he promptly stuck then note through and looked at viciously. _Stay_.

A quiet, mischievous breeze flew from the heavens, lazily brushing up against stiff and unmoving branches; blond, recently cleaned locks of hair; a white slip of paper caught between a door and wall. It tickled a certain hairdresser's hands, which pulsed in an urgent plea to be warm again.

Naruto liked his hands. Tucking them underneath his overcoat, he hurriedly shuffled back into his car and started the engine.

The sooner he could get into the car, the sooner he'd get to work, and the sooner he'd get to work, the sooner he'd get to gossip and have fun and stare at Gaara as much as he liked—no, correction, _work with_ Gaara as much as he liked.

The man would probably slit his throat if he'd even so much as _guessed_ what sort of off-the-wall disturbing thoughts the blond rolled about his brain in his free time. Not that he'd ever tell him what was going on his mind.

Oh, no. He liked his throat.

-o-o-o-o-

"Pivot your head a bit, _pivot your head—_ah, yes, there we go."

Sasuke, lying down in a black shirt and pants, tossed his head back, attempting to give his image some flair. The photographer pursed his lips, eyes invisible behind too-big sunglasses and a mess of curly hair that fell over his face, all pulled together in a ski cap. Kakashi, dressed in a gray striped suit and boots, peered at the images being pulled together on the camera and gave Sasuke the thumbs up, though the photographer's winced look didn't seem at all positive to the model.

"Sasuke—_Sasuke, _look at me, darling, I need you to be _sexy_. Not good looking. Not cool. _Sexy_." He motioned for the man to profile his torso more. "There we go, now stay there—"

_I _am_ sexy_, Sasuke thought to himself irritatingly, _Uchihas are always sexy_. Even, so he tried to twist his body, showing off more elegant cheekbone. He felt like—very simply—a slut. Extravagant makeup clustered around his eyes and cheeks and lips and it made him feel much like some vampire-esque porn star. All white skin and black hair and crazy, suggestive posing.

Damn you Kakashi. He _hated_ modeling for these wild theatrical designer lines. They were not only small and unpopular but _unfashionable_, too, but it was work and work is money. If only he'd finished recording his third album… perhaps Sasuke could be rid of these stupid low-grade bad photographer type shoots for a while.

"Down! Twirl your hair! Give more energy in your legs! Furrow your brows! Yes! Yes! _Good_!"

Kakashi gave a small clap of his hands and very pointedly looked at his watch, giving the photographer a reminder of the Uchiha's busy time schedule. The kid had the decency to _scowl_ at the agent before signaling the lighting maintenance to switch off.

"Good, good, Uchiha, very nice. Thank you for your hard work! Bobby, go get me some water."

Sasuke very eagerly tossed off the ridiculous shirt and tie and pants he had been dragged into and took a warm and wet towel, wiping off makeup left and right. Kakashi waited patiently outside the door as the man pulled on a black suit and hat and some more manly accessories, giving the reflection in the mirror a hard squint before quickly leaving the area as fast as he could.

"Do _not_ tell me we have another shoot or filming or walk within the next hour." he growled in the direction of his agent, who was busy trying to avoid looking at the brunette's face.

Kakashi winced. "We _don't_ have a shoot or filming or walk _but_—" Oh no, Sasuke hated the 'buts'. "—we're hustling you in to a model pick for a walk next week—don't _look_ at me like that, it'll be _good_. You'll get to look at some nice ladies."

The Uchiha responded by throwing his bottle cap at the man and taking a swig out of his water bottle. Damn agent. Couldn't give him some consideration for once in his twisted psychotic life. Before he could pout or whine or do anything remotely prissy, however, the silver-haired man was already reciting the events of the next hour in fast forward, swiveling the car down the more remote alleyways of the city.

"So we're going to get you in for the model choosing session in about twenty minutes, which is the time I need to drive—after that, I've booked you an hour with a sound producer from your brother's band—_don't look at me like that_! He's a freaking sound producer, not the antichrist! Anyway, you're going to have some wonderful tea with him—fun, fun—before going to a photo shoot preview uptown. That's right—_the_ Calvin Klein photo shoot I begged my ass in for you to get in."

Sasuke gave no response, just continued to chug water and look at his manicured nails. Kakashi moaned.

"At least look a little pleased! You know how _hard_ it is to get the clients to allow a low-level model into the big labels? Nil! Zero! Impossible! But I got you in! At least be proud of me, just a _little_."

"I'm proud of you, Kakashi," Sasuke responded in a deadpan voice, frowning at himself in a handheld mirror he'd pulled out of the seat pocket, "I'm proud that you got me into a shoot which does not at all guarantee my face to appear in an advertisement, and probably only accepted me because of my singing career. I'm proud that you couldn't find a stable hairstylist for me to use whenever the companies do not provide hairstylist referrals. I'm proud of you for screwing up my schedule."

Kakashi sighed piteously, smoothing his tie as he drove. It would be too much to expect the singer to compliment him graciously. It was a chilly day, like so many others the days before—the type where breath became snowy and one wanted to pull on all the jackets in one's wardrobe or hide in the covers.

Sasuke was moody, he reasoned, because he was being self-conscious about that little bald patch behind his left ear. The man had been dispatched from the hospital shortly after Iruka's visit and had spent hours staring at the little bald spot the doctors had to create to stitch his head closed. Even now, the brunette was fluffing up the hair covering the spot, fluffing it back down, and frowning at it angrily. The spot _hurt_ too.

Stupid blond kid.

If only he'd gotten a better look at him or the store he'd been carted from, he'd go back and give the guy a piece of his mind.

"Any word of a stable hairdresser?" the Uchiha asked, trying not to sound so hopeful. Big labels usually provided hairstylists for models or salon referrals, true, but with the small companies he'd been to or even the larger lines, hairstylists were assigned or not even provided for him. He didn't quite like having his hair put the hands of someone he didn't even trust.

"Oh, yes, Iruka got back in touch with me," Kakashi hummed, voice chipper again. It frightened the brunette—a chipper tone usually meant the agent's sadistic streak was surfacing again. Though not all the time. Hopefully not. "He says he's got one of his old students to give you a test run, see if the two of you click—" _though at the rate we're going at, _nothing_, seems to click with you,_ "—but I don't know when he's coming in. He'll just pop up so keep your eye up for him."

"Like a jack-in-the-box?" the singer snarled sarcastically, though he was probably more annoyed by his bald patch than anything. It hurt! It itched! It was embarrassing, seeing that he was in the prime of his life—twenty-four was pretty good, yes?—and he had a bald spot. _Bald spot_. He continued to prod at it with a delicately trimmed finger, mirror becoming his next best friend.

Kakashi sighed, again, though with a smile tugging at his lips. He caught every movement of his charge through his rearview mirror: the squirming, the pursed lips, wrinkled nose. Everything.

He wondered briefly if Sasuke knew how entertaining he was. No, better not tell him. It was one of the—very few—perks of the job.

He enjoyed seeing Sasuke's pained face as he performed a body-flaunting catwalk down a wood-paneled room, ogled at by fashion designers attempting to select their muses. He enjoyed giving people a mysterious wiggle-of-the-eyebrow, the dark see-you-later look, and edge of something hopeful. He enjoyed driving Sasuke batty. He enjoyed seeing the man _squirm_ when trying to go over his newest recording with a rival sound producer.

Ooh, that was _fun_.

"Kakashi, you are a dead man," the singer breathed down his back as they left the café, though the agent was alert enough to catch beads of sweat gripping precariously on the younger man's skin. Fun, fun. Kakashi applauded himself.

He knew he was doing a good job if he was making Sasuke sweat.

"God, I'm _sticky_. Hey, pull over to my apartment a bit, I want to take a shower." Sasuke laid on his back, suit and hat tossed aside, despite the chill. Kakashi showed Sasuke his watch—Rolex, quite expensive, Kakashi—waggling his eyebrows. It made Sasuke feel queasy.

The waggling, not the watch.

"We've got to get to the photo shoot soon, Sasuke-_chan_."

A glare. "Screw the stupid photo shoot, I need a shower, a towel, _anything_."

"My shirt?" Kakashi asked suggestively, and earned a scathing glare from his client. He gave a short laugh before finally deciding to give the now sulking singer a break from his sadistic teasing. "I'm sure some of the more experienced models will help you out once we get there, alright? Just wait a bit." The man even dared to roll down the windows, allowing bursts of chilling January air into the car, as if the damn cold would help dry his skin.

It did help dry his skin, actually. It was just _cold_.

"Do all the newbies have blue lips? Oh, don't glare at me like that, I know who you are." A model hustled him inside the backroom, dressed in a satin halter top and heels and hair still in the middle of curling, evidently busy. The inside of the room was clean, actually, as opposed to the littered gum-plastered hellholes Sasuke had grudgingly grown used to—very professional.

There were many unfamiliar faces scuttling about the linoleum floors, either trying on or being measured for clothes, though Sasuke immediately recognized two women already finished and allowing makeup-artists to put on the finishing touches.

Tayuya was not someone Sasuke had gotten along with in previous shoots, though personal preferences were obviously irrelevant in the professional world. She was crude, foul-mouthed, arrogant, short and scraped upon her neighbor's nerves like sandpaper against porcelain glass. In fact, she had been one of the other models in the Orochimaru production and had spent the majority of her time with the brunette making insulting remarks about his hair.

Not that having to have horns plastered on your head was embarrassing. Oh _no_. Sasuke had bit his lip keeping back a rhinoceros comment and attempted to ignore her for the rest of the shoot.

Sabaku Temari, on the other hand, the brunette respected. Despite the fact he'd only met her once in person, he dabbled into Japanese gossip enough to know that Temari was probably the only Japanese model who'd managed to get her face printed for top notch labels and top notch magazines and had connections enough to make even some American-born actresses turn green.

The brief moment he'd shared with the woman during a fashion-related party had given him the impression of a proud and self-assured model with no tolerance for too-dominating men—very set in her own beliefs and styles and personality, obviously.

Despite her occasional sassiness, however, all would be forgiven because of her legs.

She had drop-dead gorgeous legs.

Even Kakashi raised a brow at them before quickly striding over to the director or manager or whoever ran these things to discuss Sasuke's part in the production. The man—European? Certainly not American, with his elegant accent and posture—stroked his moustache a moment before, scanning about the room of half-dressed men and women, barking: "Sabaku! Come here!"

Temari sauntered over, bare-footed and licking her lips as she exchanged glances between the manager and this newbie-of-a-model. "Yes?"

"Teach the kid how to walk, okay? He better have it down within ten minutes, 'cause that's when the shoot starts, so get to it."

The blonde quickly narrowed her eyes, mascara accenting her sudden deep-sea glower. Throwing a scowl at the back of the European man, she turned to the Uchiha and immediately recognized him from a CD album Gaara had once brought home. In fact, she stood and stared at him for quiet some time before speaking.

"Walk!" Her coarse, sharp voice jolted the brunette, who hadn't been expecting being ordered around. He blinked, hands slipped firmly in his pocket in an attempt to warm himself up.

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me!_ Walk_! Move those manly arms of yours or something. Let's see what I have to work with." As if to emphasize her point, the blonde gave a cool runway walk down the middle of the dressing room and back, back straight and every movement revealing that great flow of leg. Flipping her hair over her shoulder, she looked at the brunette expectantly.

Sasuke, unused to being shouted at or ordered around in such a manner, remained hunched up near the entrance of the room. A skeptical look had crept upon his face. "What does walking have to do with a photo shoot? Don't I just have to stand around?"

"That is not the point!" The blonde responded, arms crossed in front of her chest. "The walk is the most fundamental modeling skill and skills you use in the walk influence your performance while standing still. Most importantly, the walk teaches you how to hold your core—different for everybody—so you can _amplify_ that in the photos, understand?" She stepped back and pointed down the room. "Now _walk_."

Sasuke sighed, taking a quick glance at Kakashi. The gray-haired agent was standing aside, still discussing matters with the manager, blindly ignoring whatever the hell was going on behind him at the moment. Dammit.

Taking off his jacket, he squared back his shoulders and took a moment to think: how _do_ you walk?

Before he could let discern creep onto his face, however, he plowed through and made a quick stride down the middle of the room, feeling like an idiot.

Temari evidently thought he _looked_ like an idiot, too. "Fish legs!" She called out, startling him and gaining incredulous looks from a few other models, "What the hell are you doing? The _limbo_? Walk from the core! The core! Look _natural_." She took a small spin and landed on her toes, as if demonstrating to the brunette exactly what he _didn't_ do.

Sasuke narrowed ebony-colored eyes, inwardly fuming. The woman held a large part of Sasuke's respect, but it didn't mean he had to _like it_ when she was picking on him. Again, he strode down the room, this time walking normally—casual stride, back only slightly pulled back, face expressionless. He turned around on his heel, giving the blonde a look: "Now?"

"Better," the blonde muttered under her breath, cocking her head and crossing her arms as she, again, examined the amateur. "Walk's passable, physical features will look fine with makeup… only problem I see is…"

She reached out and, without shame, gave the singer a little smack on the butt. "Need a little more exercise," she winked.

Sasuke stared at her with wide, disbelieving eyes, as if absolutely shocked at what she'd just done. In fact, he _was_ shocked. The only other person who'd ever managed to touch his butt was his brother, and that was just Itachi coolly making jabs at his "flab". The older Uchiha would rather be spending time touching Kisame's butt, but the Foolish Little Brother must learn.

Temari gave a bark of a laugh, bemused in some odd twisted way (in Sasuke's mind, at least): "Oh, come now, you better get used to people touching you. This is the modeling world! Try and feel complimented when someone reaches over and takes a pinch of ass, okay?"

Sasuke continued to stare, and would have kept on staring if Kakashi had not at that moment came slinking back from the manager. "Hey, Sasuke, it's about time get dressed and do your hair and makeup, so hustle over here for a minute." He gave a quick—almost apologetic?—nod to Temari, whose hands were on her hips, expecting thanks.

Kakashi scratched the back of his hair, sighing. What was with women and recognition?

"Oh, yes… thank you, Ms. Sabaku, you do wonders to our little Uchiha. We'll see on set." This seemed to satisfy the woman nicely and she returned to her station without a word. Kakashi scratched the back of his head again before rolling back suddenly aching shoulders and tucking his planner underneath his arm. Women. Though she _did_ have nice legs.

"Hey, Sasuke, do you want to hear some good news?"

"Coming from you, it'd probably not that good." The Uchiha had seemingly recovered his dignity and was coolly crossing his arms, leaning on his right foot. Kakashi cocked his head teasingly—he knew his charge too well. With the slight goose-bumps on his arms and a quick darting of his eyes, Sasuke was far from cool. Disturbed, in fact.

"Mah, have some more faith in me, Sasuke. I promise it's good!" He hushed his voice using his planner, tone low. "Your hairstylist's come in! I just had a quick look at him, and he's already much better than your previous ones, so you'll probably be happy. Here, we'll meet him in the hallway."

Sasuke was much less enthusiastic. He trusted Iruka much more than perverted Kakashi, true, but his unrealistic expectations have already shot down even the most patient hairdressers, leading to a sense of… hopelessness. Shrugging back on his coat—much to the chagrin of one of the Calvin Keith designers who was attempting to select an outfit based on the Uchiha's body type—he coolly stepped outside.

And stopped. He slowly turned his head to examine a casually lounging man squatting on a bench, knees pulled up to his chest. The sitting man looked as if he was dozing.

_Wow_.

A pause. Sasuke paused, at least.

The only thing that popped out of his mouth first was: "I like your hair."

-o-o-o-o-

AN: I apologize that this chapter took so long to write... that, and this was mostly a transition chapter, anyway -is shot-. I promise more lovey-dovey stuff next chapter as well as the somewhat? conclusion of Neji and his hair. I love all of your reviews and can't help but share my thanks XD. No matter what reviews say, they all push me to finish writing the next chapter (not saying that I won't write the next chapter if you don't review, but doing so gives me confidence to go a little faster). Yes, there is brief scene with Gaara's family in this chapter, and a taste of how everyone and everything is connected in this fanfiction. This nameless Californian town must be pretty damn small if everyone that is remotely Japanese knows everything about each other. Anyway, thank you so much for reading! And I'd love it if you contiuned to leave reviews. Even if you just say "great. update soon " I'll cherish it with all my heart XD.


	4. Four

Konoha Hair and Nail salon

--by Flightangel

-o-o-o-o-

4

-o-o-o-o-

"Tsunade-sama…"A certain redheaded hairdresser stood poised in front of the woman's manicurist station, hands tucked into his pockets and his face and tone neutral. The woman looked up from eating her box lunch, mouth full with chicken panku and soybeans and makeup smeared, annoyed.

"Yes? What is it, Gaara?" She may have added a "you brat" to the end of that if he wasn't as skilled as he was, for interrupting her and her breakfast time (she often ate lunch boxes as breakfast, seeing that most Japanese restaurants only served lunch and dinner). She licked her fork.

"I will be leaving work early today." He declared matter-of-factly—and Tsunade raised a thin brow. It was more of an order, a statement, a _declaration_, then a question; in fact, she was surprised he'd even come to alert her at all with the way he was speaking to her.

"And why is that?" She violently stabbed another piece of chicken and held the aforementioned piece of meat in front of her face, casually examining it with honey-brown eyes.

"I have a part-time job I have to go to."

Tsunade raised her brow again, surprised. The fork quivered in front of her lips.

Part-time job?

Granted, she didn't quite mind her employees working shifts elsewhere—Sakura had medical school to attend at times and she'd have Haku become a makeshift secretary—but _Gaara_. Well, that was quite surprising. Gaara never seemed to care for money or glamour and made do with whatever he had the moment, be it clothes, string, or paper-mache—so seeing that he was taking up another job for money was quite odd.

"What time do you have to be gone?" She popped the piece of chicken in her mouth, thought-process ended. Gaara remained stiffly standing, hands clenched white inside his pockets.

"An hour before normal. I'll make it up tomorrow." He paused. "This means my work hours will be shorter, so you may pay me less." When Tsunade continued to gnaw on some soybean shells wordlessly and dusted the table a bit with her napkin, looking at her nails, he turned heel and returned to his work station.

Inwardly, the blonde buxom manager sighed, lunch box clattering on the counter as she finished the last of her meal. It seems as if good times can't last forever.

Briefly, she wondered what she should do when every one of these young folk—Sakura, Naruto, Gaara, Haku—were gone. People move out, change jobs, leave because of quarrels—

And still—somehow—life goes on.

-o-o-o-o-

_Snip, snip_.

Locks of hair fell messily to the ground, lying in puddles on the linoleum floor. A skilled stylist fluffed his clients' hair as other such celebrities were being equally pampered by other hairdressers around them. Rows of mirrors decorated the interior walls; clients and agents were bustling around trying to correct the stylists, anxious voices growing higher and higher.

Fashion designers stood contemplating around the dressing stations, instructing and painting an image of what they imagined the perfect hairdo would be for their latest fashion extravaganza. Stylists nodded, smiled, and did their own thing anyway.

Fate has an odd way in intervening with human affairs. It was a meddlesome habit of the gods long understood by Earth's scuttling inhabitants: how else could two such people collide in such circumstances? It was baffling. And through _whom_ their meeting should ensue was just as troubling.

In the breezy summertime, at the bud of a new year for both a young hairdresser and a fashion designer, both fresh out of college at the young age of twenty-two—fate had longed planned their meeting.

A single fashion designer, hands crossed nervously, lolled his head as he examined the stylist's handiwork on the model currently bearing one of his best works in ages. He was young and fresh and attempted a tough stance on the floor, though his inexperience allowed anxiety to foster in his heart. He'd dealt with models and such back in fashion school, but there was a frightening gap between fashion school and the real world, and—sometimes—he'd wish he could crawl back into the security of the classroom and _stay there._ He furrowed his dark eyebrows, eyes locking in on the hair.

Seeing that the model's hair was naturally hard to work with, it was amazing the hairstylist was able to do anything at all, but it wasn't _enough_.

"Can you lighten this up a bit? I want the image of cotton-candy, clouds, floating, happy things." The designer waved his arm about: "Gushing, but in a sensible fashion."

The stylist said nothing. Though standing straight and poised with an air of cool confidence, he, too, found this worrisome. At this point in time, he was still inexperienced and unable to completely interpret whatever the hell the designer was gushing out of his mouth (or did he want the model's hair to gush? He couldn't tell) and hid his aggravation in the pucker of his lips. Beauty school didn't really prepare you for the pressure of the market, and the scratchy whiny voices echoing about the room was enough to grate on his nerves.

He regarded the designer cooly, as if challenging his ability to order the hairsylist about, though seemed to be about to oblige and leaned forward to snatch a bottle of hairspray from a container under the table—when the sound of retching captured everyone's attention.

One of the models had just vomited all over the floor.

The entire company stared, shocked, and unable to speak—what to do? Go help her or let her take care of herself? None of those around the model wanted to possibly upset or offend her in any way, and was wondering how they should help when the young fashion designer, who had been cruelly pulled from his imagined world of cotton-candy and happy things, let out an enormous sigh.

"Tch." he muttered under his breath, putting down a hefty pile of magazines he'd used to show the stylist exactly what he wanted. "How troublesome."

-o-o-o-o-

Gaara was tired—more than tired: worn, haggard, white and pale with frustration, squatting on the curb in front of the production station, hand tapping his cheek. It was growing quite dark outside, the sunset bruising violet and red against the silhouettes of buildings and cars and trees and other such things.

It was so _cold_.

"Look, I have an appointment with a 'Uchiha Sasuke' inside," he had explained as clearly as he possibly could to the sweet, smiling secretary—whose smile was almost three times as frightening as Sakura's, if that was possible—sitting behind the front counter, "so can you please let me in?"

"Sorry, sir," the woman continued to grin cheerily, "What was your name again?"

"Sabaku Gaara."

She fingered through a pile of paper, flipping through the sheets deftly. She squinted at the fine print. "I'm sorry, but 'Sabaku Gaara' is not one of the hairstylists working at the salon here, so I can't let you in."

Though the redhead's face carefully remained expressionless and blank, a slight clenching of his hands gave away his rising anger. "I already said: I am a hairstylist that has an appointment with Uchiha Sasuke—"

"—who is currently getting ready for a shoot in which only company hairstylist can enter and _you_, Mr. Sabaku Gaara," the blasted woman was still grinning, adjusting her little moon-rimmed glasses gleefully behind her bundle of papers, "are _not_ a company hairstylist. Thus, I can't let you in. Sorry!"

It took the most of Gaara's inner willpower to not reach into his bag for a pair of scissors and stab the woman repeatedly with it. In the eyes. _Stab, stab, stab_.

But no, Sabaku Gaara was a well-educated, _nonviolent_, adult male who, at that point, chose instead to stuff his inching hand into his pocket, turn heel, and promptly walk out the door and into the cold. The swinging doors made one last moaning plea at him before falling silent to the howls of the wind.

The said winds snickered and played with his newly cut hair—he had cut it himself during work, no matter what Kankuro said about the haircut not being suited for his facial type—as he continued to tap his cheek wordlessly. Cars hummed by as they sped down the street across from him, coming in an assortment of different colors: white, black, red, blue, navy… his own car was white, sitting pallid and invisible next to the bleakness of the snow.

Thank god it wasn't snowing _at the moment_, or else Gaara would have just driven home without a thought—no amount of scolding from his uncle for dropping a job opportunity was worth an hour's wait in snow. The cold made the redhead feel clammy and in need of a blanket, the latter part a wish that was only ever granted by his sister, who was very good at interpreting his moods.

If only he had a blanket at the moment… he slowly turned his head to regard his car musingly. But no, Gaara was a responsible man, if not a bit stiff and cold-necked.

It wasn't like he didn't _want_ to give up, but Sabaku Gaara always got the job done, even if his current job was to cut the hair of probably the prissiest and bitchiest singer alive. Even his scissors were cringing.

He decided to go the more direct route of entrance, seeing as the damn secretary was taking pride in barring him from the company walls at the moment. Digging through his pant pocket, he retrieved Kankuro's cellphone—seeing that it was Kankuro's jacket and the older sibling always put his cellphone in his jacket pocket, it only made sense—he flipped the screen open and clumsily dialed in the number Yashamaru had handed him before leaving the car this morning.

"Secretaries can be a pain in the ass, so here's the agent's phone number, in case you're stuck." The older man paused. "But, of course, you'll probably be fine, so you won't need it."

Ha. Won't need it. Right, Yashamaru-ojiisan.

He sat with his jacket wrapped tight around his body, feet motionless against the cement and back straight and stiff, bearing the freeze in a manly fashion. Though perhaps his sister would argue that it was more of an insane, non-feeling fashion, but she had odd taste in interpretation.

"Yo. Hatake Kakashi."

Japanese. All the better.

"This is Sabaku Gaara, the hairstylist Iruka-sensei advised." Straight-forward, blunt, and succinct. The redhead coughed, the chilly winds suddenly finding joy in filling his mouth with dry freezing gusts. "I am having a very hard time trying to get inside the building. Can you please help me inside?" The last sentence was deadpan and firm—although Gaara had long learned to phrase his words in a question, his statements always sounded very much like an order.

It was just… habit.

Kakashi, on the other side, would have cheerfully clapped his hands together if his left hand was not occupied holding a well-worn cellphone and, instead, resorted to letting an invisible smile dance on his lips: "Aah, Sabaku-san! Yes, we were waiting for you—Iruka has talked about your skill and, well, let's just see if Sasuke agrees. Not saying you aren't good, mind, but you've probably heard of Sasuke's pickiness…? Oh, anyway, back to the point: yes, I will talk to the secretary about it in a moment, hold on a bit—"

A beep.

Gaara waited some five more minutes out in the cold, staring blankly at the now swelling purple skies and cluster of clouds lazily swimming towards the horizon. Swim, swim, swim. It would have been quite a beautiful sight, what with the white snow and pale, contrasting figures of the buildings, if it didn't just mean that it was getting late.

At last, another blip signaled that Hatake-san was back:

"—okay, so I went and talked to her about it and she's going to let you in now. Just come on up—we're in studio eighteen, near the back of the hallway on the second floor. You can't miss it, everyone's crowded around here." Judging from the amount of loud background noise behind his voice, the stylist could wager a guess on how crowded it was: "Just wait in the hall while I go fetch Sasuke—he's getting walking lessons from Sabaku Temari… wait, is she your sister? She is, isn't she?" A cough. "Anyway, he's making this sour prissy face, so get yourself up here as soon as you can so he doesn't blow a fuse. Up, up!"

The stylist pocketed the cellphone—it was sticky, the damn thing. Stupid Kankuro and his stupid habit of talking on the phone whilst drinking soda—and, with a slight brush of the jacket, returned to the warmth of the building.

Face passive as he coolly regarded the now slightly frowning woman at the counter—he would still very much have liked to stab her in the eye, but he didn't really want to be chased out after just being allowed in—he turned his head away with a huff, carefully yanked open the stairway door, and disappeared up into the steps.

-o-o-o-o-

Naruto was seven years old when he declared—to the whole world, or, at the time, the whole playground—that he liked boys, and that girls were icky, and that was he was going to marry Iruka-daddy when he was going to be grown up. Needless to say, it was a rather flushed-looking professor that had left with the child tucked firmly under arm, quite embarrassed at his adopted son's behavior—

"Oh, I don't know what to do, Kakashi." The man slumped down onto his boyfriend's kitchen table, hair mussed and pooling onto the mahogany wood. Kakashi sat sitting opposite him, sipping at a strawberry lemonade he'd hand-squeezed and attempting to look concerned (though failing).

"Well, boys are just boys. He'll grow out of it."

"But I'm just _worried_ that, you know, he got the idea of liking boys in his head because of—" Iruka hitched his breath, anguished, "because of _me, _you know, and _you_, too, sort of—because he grew up in the presence of gay men, he'd turn gay himself—is that possible? Dammit, this was just what the orphanage feared!"

"Iruka," Kakashi said, tone suddenly harsh. His strawberry lemonade clattered onto the countertop, skidding on the wood and looking as if it was about to precariously tip over. "Iruka, listen to me. Being gay and being straight is something that you're born with, not something kids—well, not something that kids just _pick up_ from their parents. And at this age, he's isn't old enough to be interested in fads yet, so you at least know he's saying what he wants to say—and if he does turn out gay, then it's no one's fault. Okay? And being gay isn't all that bad, is it?"

The man softened his tone, lifting himself up from his stool to scoot into Iruka's chair, left hand casually slinging over his lover's shoulder: "He's still a child, Iruka. I'm sure you'll wrestle the truth out of him later, when he's old enough to understand exactly why Mommies and Daddies exist in the world and how some people can be—" he leaned forward, "—Daddies and Daddies, too, so _don't worry_."

Iruka let out a long, melodious sigh, head suddenly feeling heavy on the tabletop. It was quite rare for Kakashi to be comforting him and not the other way around, and it was… touching, in a way. Feeling as if he needed to grace the silver-haired man draped across his shoulder with an answer, he turned his head slightly so that the barest glimpse of gray was in his range of vision:

"Okay, okay, you're right. I'm just worrying over nothing." He let out a small reassuring chuckle, more for himself than his lover, obviously. "Kids don't know what they're saying sometimes anyway. These things will come… later."

Just _how much_ later the professor didn't know.

And though he would never in his life admit such a thing to Kakashi (how could he?) the man secretly and fervently wished with all his heart that Naruto was _straight—_straight as a line going on forever and ever and ever into the depths of space and back again.

It wasn't that he was opposed to homosexuals—seeing that he was a homosexual himself. Iruka was, instead, much more worried over society.

Worried about what society would do to Naruto if he did declare his sexuality. Worried that he would be treated the same way he himself—Iruka—had been treated when he was young.

Worried that some idiot would come and tear that innocent heart into tiny pieces.

Worried that Naruto would never find his one true love.

"What troublesome worries," Kakashi may have said to him if he'd heard these thoughts, "Naruto's a strong boy. He'll pull through."

And if only Kakashi was just so _right_.

-o-o-o-o-

The door slammed open jarringly, immediately catching a certain secretary's attention. A figure sat slumped in the doorway, huffing, and, scanning the still oddly empty salon with frantic eyes, blurted out:

"Where's Gaara?"

Naruto was worn with his car keys still fresh in his hands and leaned against the doorframe of the front door, cheeks red from the cold. After driving like a madman from the Californian suburbs to try and make at least one of his appointments, it was understandable that the man was a little worn out.

Sakura looked up, surprised, from her game of solitaire—balancing checkbooks, sending out pay checks and settling appointments were _so_ overrated—pink hair tied back with a red ribbon and cheeks brushed with glittery makeup. The medical student and part-time secretary put her flip-flopped feet back onto the floor and set her green tea onto the tabletop, annoyed.

She aimed a well-trained glare at the slightly panting blond. "You're late, Naruto! Your customer's not here, either. None of them came, actually."

He suddenly felt a flood of relief tingle from his head-to-toe, knowing that there was no angry patron to somehow talk his way through. Despite a somewhat clumsy yet appealing-enough tongue, he never quite liked facing the enraged snarl of a worker running on schedule.

Collecting himself, he shook his blond locks: "I_ know_ I'm late! Where's Gaara—and Tsunade-baachan?" He attempted to messily cover up his initial request for Gaara's presence, to avoid suspicion—though the look the pink-haired secretary was giving him was anything but not questioning.

In fact, was there a little hidden smile in her eyes?

Without the manager and other hairstylist and the eerily empty lobby, the salon was quiet. In fact, the quietness unsettled the Naruto, causing him to duck under a sales sign and scoot closer to Sakura who had gone back to her accounting and was talking to him off-handedly.

"Gaara went to get coffee and Tsunade-baachan went in the backroom to talk privately with some guy… I dunno. You just missed Gaara, by the way—if you'd have come ten minutes earlier you could've convinced him to get some coffee for you, too." _Seeing that he just bore holes in my skull when I asked him to get some for me, it would be unlikely, but you could have _tried.

She took a moment to peer at the blond. "Anyhow, you should probably set up fast—you're kind of lucky that none of the morning customers showed up for some reason but just make sure you don't miss the afternoon ones."

"Aye, aye, captain!" The boy beamed and ducked under the scrutinizing glare of the aggravated student, anger resulting from a combination of Naruto's idiocy and Gaara's refusal to get her coffee. Shrugging off her frosty glance, he gave a wave at a muttering Haku—who was studying English for his English night class—("Heeeeey, Haaaakuu!" with a response of: "_Ohayo_, Naruto-san…") and pranced cheerily to his workspace.

_Happy, happy, happy… hairdresser has to be happy even if there are no damn customers to attend to… other hairstylist is missing… manager is missing… it's too silent… happy._

He attempted to brighten himself up with a self-assuring smile, humming as he—perhaps being a little too dramatic—arranged his little hairdresser's table, cleaned the mirror, dusted the dressing chair. Despite this, however, he eventually found himself dully squatting in a dresser's chair, silent and moody.

…_happy…_

The emptiness was _depressing_. The hollow where Gaara should have been either working away or reading a book was depressing, too. In fact, the mere absence of Tsunade-baachan-manager was depressing, even though he could still make out her screams from the back room. He wondered what the woman was discussing, especially in the early morning—at eight, Tsunade was usually found at her manicurist station rereading romance novels and chewing gum, breakfast lying strewn about the desk in a mess.

Something must have disrupted her system this morning.

Head lolling to the side, he spared ten minutes staring at the ceiling before beginning to pick at his toenails, briefly entertaining the idea of getting a pedicure from the still-reciting manicurist across the room. But no. Even he couldn't subject kind, quiet Haku to the horrors of his feet, though the man had probably long grown used to the smell of fungus-infested nails.

Not that Naruto's feet were fungus-infested, but they did smell a bit ripe.

"Saaaaaakura! Saaaaaaaakura!"

"What? What is it?" The secretary held the phone on hold for a moment with a primly elevated finger, lips set in a thin line. Seeing as she had been trying to persuade a potential client to set an appointment not on a day when the salon was full, it was no wonder her temper was shorter than before, if possible. The blond ignored the glaring warning signs (flared nostrils, raised shoulders, twitching brows), vying instead to pout and drape himself over the dressing chair.

"Sakura, I'm _boooored_!" He turned on a hairdryer and aimed the bursts of hot air onto his dry hair, "There are no clients, it's cold, and Tsunade-baachan's been arguing for a long time! I don't have anything to doooo! Gaaaah! Dammit, I'm going insane!"

The woman was about to reply hotly when she was interrupted—

"Naruto, shut up and get your coffee."

The addressed hairstylist let out a bark of surprise when a merciless breath of icy wind suddenly flew at him from the open door, powdered snow illuminating the stiff figure standing in the doorway.

Gaara normally intimidated people, but, covered with a thin layer of snow that made him appear to be Jack Frost's grandson, he wasn't quite so scary.

"Sugar!" Naruto laughed cheekily, propping himself back up into the chair, suddenly finding his mood cheered. Gaara frowned, silent, and set a Starbucks coffee holder onto the counter, four cups of steaming java patiently sitting under a thin layer of powdery snow. He irritably brushed the quickly melting slush off with a thumb, wincing at the biting chill.

Gaara _hated_ the cold. If that hadn't gotten across yet.

Despite the redhead's angered expression, however, even Sakura felt a bit lighter when she'd realized that the redhead had—most likely grudgingly, under whatever moral conscience he had left—fetched her coffee for her.

She gave him a flirtatious wink.

He turned on around on heel, pointedly ignoring her and her lip gloss and sparkles and hung his brother's jacket on the coat rack before giving Naruto's ears a bit of a twist when he walked past. The blond immediately clutched the hurt appendages, yelping.

"Ow!"

"Get to work." his colleague repeated, tonelessly as usual. Naruto gave a melodramatic sigh, as if wounded, though gave a reassuring wink at Haku when the man looked up to see if the hairstylist was alright. Gaara narrowed black-rimmed eyes, feeling just slightly uneasy; most days, both he and Naruto would stay after closing hours to tidy up their workspace and leave together, albeit silently (though Naruto's running mouth was anything but quiet). Leaving early, however, the redhead would then miss the chance to give Naruto a farewell nod—an odd worry, but important to him, nonetheless.

After spending a moment cheekily observing the older man setting up his workplace (and just ignorant enough to not realize that the said man was also stealing looks at him as well and muttering things to himself), the hairstylist took a light, casual swig of his coffee.

He almost spat the blasted thing out, jolting up in surprise. Dangling the cup at a good arm's distance, he eyed it with warily.

Wait…

"Sakura, what kind of coffee did he get you?"

The pink-haired girl chewed the back of her pen thoughtfully. "Regular. Why?"

Naruto gave the woman a grin and a wave, as if he was worrying about nothing, before turning about his chair and examining his cup again. He carefully popped open the cap, peering at the frothy mess within, suddenly feeling… fuzzy. And weird. And perhaps a little bit scared.

"I didn't know he knew what kind of coffee I liked…" _Starbuck's Grande Caramel-Syrup Frappachino with half-and-half milk and the whipped cream as high as they can mount it—oh, and don't forget the cherry. I don't even know if you serve cherries with your coffee, but give me one anyway._

Forget Sasuke and his damn cottage and injury and whatever. This coffee made his day.

-o-o-o-o-

"I won't!"

"You _will_."

"You can't make me, you stupid, lazy, dumbass pigheaded _inconsiderate_ excuse for a _man_, you understand me?!" Two lipstick tubes were thrown at the poor designer's face, and the man was forced to take cover behind a fake plant. "Oh, and don't even think about 'dropping' me! You know what kind of favor I'm doing for modeling for you? Huh? I'm _not_ wearing that, Shikamaru, and _you can't make me_!"

Nara Shikamaru sighed under his breath, wondering what in God's name had lead him to fall so helplessly in love with one of the grumpiest, frilliest, _prissiest_ creatures on earth: women. Not that falling in love with men was any better—sitting through some of Chouji's bad days had, of course, revealed to him the irritable sides of men, too—but women were just so much more… mystic. In his two years of experience as a fashion designer, he'd never quite met another being that could be just as damn confusing as that _other_ gender.

Mystic, loud, annoying…

He sighed again, ducking to his left as an open shampoo bottle collided with the wall behind him.

"Look, Temari, be reasonable. It's just one fashion show, no big deal. Just walk out, do your stuff, and then run backstage, okay?"

"_Not a big deal?_ Having _peacock feathers_ sticking out of my _ass_ is _no big deal?_ Nara, you sometimes come up with the most genius ideas, _but—_" The blonde held up the incredulous costume with her forefinger and thumb, as if afraid that it would contaminate her. "—_this_ is _NOT_ genius!"

Shikamaru furrowed his brows tiredly, finding his hands inching its casual "thinking" position, forefingers and thumbs pressing against each other as he remained behind his fake-plant-of-a-shield. The man was lithe and tall and was easily able to hide inside the narrow space, but his lack of thinness made it hard to completely dodge the woman's attacks—he needed enough bulk for him to get away modeling his own clothing, after all.

Opening his eyes, he, again, tried to renegotiate. "Look, Temari, I'm a model, too, so I know what it's like to dress troublesomely, okay? I once had to go down the catwalk in a g-string with glittery makeup over my chest. It's _not a big deal_."

"Not a big deal if it's a big brand, yes!" Temari hissed, hands seizing a tissue box, "but at a local fashion show where the people in the audience are _personal, family members_, yes, _it is a big deal!_"

Tch. _Troublesome_. Shikamaru would have never guessed the true brash nature of this model, whom, two years prior, he'd helped up from a violent bout of vomiting and laid across a couch. Back then, Temari was pallid and pale and _quiet_ and didn't say much of anything; lying limply on the furniture, she looked like a doll.

A hissy, tissue-box and lipstick-tube throwing doll with a temper and an obstinate refusal to dress in anything costume-like, that is.

The Japanese man would have argued on if the door had no oh-so-conveniently flung open at that point, revealing the bulky, self-assured form of Temari's younger brother, Sabaku Kankuro. Temari twisted around sharply mid-rant to face her sibling, eyes wide with infuriation.

The makeup-artist pointedly ignored the odd scene laying before him—tissue paper, toiletries, torn-up pieces of fabric scattered about the ground; his sister's frizzy hair and wide-eyed, frantic look, jaw clenched and arms stiffly clinging to the edge of the vanity table; a certain fashion designer cowering behind a fake plant in the corner—and signaled that their uncle was just outside the door.

"He wants to talk to you." he concluded, sweating a bit under Temari's fierce and aggressive stare. Such a meeting was one that even an angry Temari could not refuse, and she knew it.

The woman threw one last defiant flare of her nostrils in the direction of the still-hiding fashion designer, eyes hard, before calming herself down. Smoothing down her mane-liked hair and wiping the sweat off her face with a napkin she found in one of the vanity drawers, she smoothed her modeling dress and coughed.

Shikamaru remained motionless behind the plant, and continued to be frozen as the model stiffly stalked out of the room, shutting the door behind her.

"Troublesome woman." he said loudly after he was sure that devil-of-a-model was gone, untangling himself from plastic tree limbs and nimbly climbing into the mess the dressing room was in.

Kankuro just eyed him suspiciously.

"She wouldn't have gotten so worked up if your design wasn't so abominable," he drawled. "Do you enjoy annoying her on purpose?"

"That would be too troublesome…"

"Modeling is too troublesome. Designing is too troublesome. Eating is too troublesome. Hell, I even wonder how you get out of bed in the morning."

Shikamaru sighed, running his hand through his taunt ponytail. Surveying the mess around him, he—again—sighed, rubbing his temples.

Receiving no adequate response, the older man tucked his hands into his pant pockets and kicked open the door, peering down an isolated hallway and listening for the quiet hush of whisperings being discussed several doors down. His suspicions confirmed, he turned back to the slouching fashion designer: "Nee-chan and Yashamaru-jiisan will probably be talking for some time, so…"

He scratched his head, suddenly looking a bit uncomfortable.

Kankuro, from years of working alongside designers in the salons and makeup rooms, _knew_ that Shikamaru was a good man at heart—but his overprotective brotherly tendencies usually led him to suspect the kid to unreasonable proportions.

For instance: what was he doing looking at his sister's legs (doesn't everybody)? Why is he _touching her thigh_ (how else was he supposed to see how well those pants fit)? Dammit, don't get so close to her! (In that case, Shikamaru really had no excuse).

"…there's a real nice bakery down the lane," Kankuro scratched his head. "You want to go grab some lunch?" _Know you better, see your motives and weak points and find a way to protect my sister from you and your evil perverted manly crazy stalker-ish ideals, ah _ha_! Don't think I don't know that inner devil inside you, Nara Shikamaru_! _I _will _catch you yet_!

_Must be Chouji's family's bakery_, the aforementioned stylist thought to himself lazily, brain deciding that it was too much effort to read too much into Kankuro's invitation. Probably another get-to-know-your-enemy lunch in which the eldest Sabaku brother would stare at him with binoculars three feet away and try to see how much he "fantasized" about Temari. How troublesome… sometimes, he preferred the silence of young Sabaku Gaara, even if his stare was a bit unnerving.

At least Gaara was more interesting to look at.

-o-o-o-o-

Fate was still laughing. Perhaps it enjoyed seeing the discomfort it threw it's victims in, or, perhaps, it just really, really liked to see humans unnerved. Either way, its chuckles were evident. California sat cowering under the glaring summer sun, its rays glancing at its uptown district with greedy, attentive eyes.

The hairstylist and fashion designer sat crouched across from each other at the local McDonalds, with its greasy countertops, chairs, walls, and flooring all bearing their weight down upon the two. The taller of the two spent his time sipping his soda, running his hand through his hair and sighing, inwardly wondering how he had gotten himself in this predicament.

"Come with me." the stylist had said—no, _ordered_—icily after the young designer had managed to haul the pallid model onto a sofa, with his arm crossed and eyes narrowed. The brunette would have said something in return if the older man had not strode out of the salon. Taking one more glance at the slumped model—now being tended by a flock of other shrilly girls who had escaped the holds of their stylists and were now fussing over her and the maids, who were cleaning up the vomit—he followed.

It was hot.

Seeing that it was the middle of the sweltering Californian summer, it wasn't that unreasonable. The designer had his vest unbuttoned and his shorts rolled up in quite an unprofessional manner, whilst the hairstylist seemed to be entirely comfortable in a long black tee and pants. The door of the restaurant had been propped open to let in what one hoped to be cool air inside, alternatively giving entrance to all types of nasty insects and pollen and… yes.

The fashion designer scratched his nose irritably.

Peering at his—what was the proper name for this tense relation? Adversary?—he noted the thin, gaunt look in the man's face; the fierceness of his eyes; the blood-red of his hair. He was thin and a bit bony, and, though not short, not quite tall. He looked quite young, actually—the man couldn't have been more than half a year out of beauty school. Though his physical appearance seemed to be weak, that clench of the jaw and the grip on his McFlurry told otherwise; in fact, the simple stare he was directing towards the other man was quite frightening.

In his observations, the designer took a moment to pause and look at the hand clutching the drink—the man's left hand.

Something was a little odd, but he couldn't quite place it.

Finally, the hairdresser put down his McFlurry and bowed his head slightly, though a slight flash of his eyes made it obvious that he was quite a bit unwilling to do so. "_I apologize for my sister's conduct in the salon. Temari is often irritable when she is sick_."

Quick, lilting—perhaps a bit melodious, though the man lacked tone—Japanese, probably from Kansai origin, around Kobe: Kobe-ben Japanese.

"_However…_" Those green eyes flashed, like lightening tickling the tips of a tree and delighting in the sparks that were emitted afterwards, "_I ask you do not interfere with our matters again_."

"_What_?" the designer asked in his second tongue, bored, though he remained on-guard. "_I am not aware that throwing up is a part of the average Japanese-American's 'matters'_." Despite his edgy, argumentative tone, the man could not repress a sigh.

This entire affair was quite troublesome. He normally wouldn't have helped a model—anyone, actually, for that matter—but something inside his poor dried-up soul had inevitably twisted itself backwards to force the man to lend a helping hand—and what did he get in return?

A silent interrogation from some creepy-ass hairdresser whose hair didn't look quite natural.

Good grief.

The man's eyes narrowed. "_Illness is not something us _Japanese_ like to display to the public. Judging from your clumsy American accent, you must be American-born. You do not have the same morals as we: to us, it is an embarrassing affair. Next time, keep away from our sister and let us handle her ourselves_."

The fashion designer sat stiffly as the stylist leaned forward to take a sip out of his McFlurry.

It was that moment that he realized with great shock what exactly was wrong with the older man's left hand, which was clutching the cup quite fiercely.

Sabaku Gaara was missing the top digit of his left pinky.

-o-o-o-o-

The man was somewhat handsome, in his own quirky way, and much more appealing than any of the other hairstylists Sasuke had been forced to work with previously. The Uchiha cocked his head, mind agreeing with his mouth—he _did _approve of that haircut.

The redhead gave a small nod of his head, an almost-bow. The steady unwavering stare of those greenish—and sometimes blue, under the right lighting—eyes were, however, constantly trained on the taller man—watching.

"Sabaku Gaara." he replied softly in a deadpan voice, not even bothering to offer a hand for clasping. The singer gave him a just-as-aloof nod, turning his head and pointedly looking at Kakashi. The agent coughed.

"Sabaku-san—ah—well…" he coughed again, bringing up the hard backing of his clipboard to hide his wince, "Sasuke will be up in a few moments, so will you come inside and help him do his hair…?"

The brunette soon found himself propped up in a chair, dressed in a scratchy suit, face staring intently at itself in the mirror as the redheaded stylist took his position behind him. The Calvin Klein designer stood poised next to the man, staring intently at the singer as if he was nothing but a mannequin to dress up.

He discussed his wishes with this odd stranger (not one of the stylists here from the salon—no, he was an odd one out, which made him feel uneasy): "Windblown but not messy—make him look young, sexy and _sophisticated_. He's Asian, so maybe accentuate his eyes and lips and—no, _no_, don't use _that_ kind of mousse—here, this one."

Gaara looked quite blank and—was Sasuke imagining things?—a sudden flash of annoyance flickered his glinting green eyes. The man gave another short nod, and the designer left with a muttering of "Damn Asians" under his breath and left the stylist to do whatever he saw fit.

Sasuke sat still as the hairdresser expertly combed his hands through his hair—testing its strength and texture—before replacing the mousse that the designer had handed him with the one he originally picked out. "

"Asian hair doesn't react well to certain American products, so this kind of mousse is better." Gaara riffled through the locks with his hands, and the younger Uchiha could not help but feel a bit… _odd_.

Most of the other hairstylists had been loud and obnoxious or too quiet and shy or unskilled or—most irritating of all—had a horrible touch. Seeing that the hair and the scalp was a rather sensitive part of the body, the singer had been most irked by the lack of sensitivity some stylists had put onto his poor hair: those grabby, sticky hands that _dared_ to pull themselves through his locks and pulled his poor hairs right out of his head.

It felt like_ razor-sharp metal _rakes were being scraped along his scalp, sometimes.

Gaara's touch, however, was feather soft, deft, and expert—the light brushings of his fingertips was quite a surprise for Sasuke. His quietness, too, accompanied by a more confident attitude made him adept for professional styling, a rare mix Sasuke hadn't seen a while. Perhaps this one—?

—_too soon to decide yet, Sasuke._ The modeling singer shifted in his seat, lulling trance broken and the brilliant overbearing lights suddenly causing him to break out in perspiration.

The light touches inevitably caused him to flush and—dare he say?—a slight pink tinged his cheeks; never before had anyone touched his hair in such a manner, and it felt—_strange._ Elating.

Though still strange.

He squirmed and coughed and Gaara, mistaking the discomfort as impatience, pursed chapped lips and added the finishing touches to the model's gelled hair. Simple, quick and efficient. The man did, however, step back with a slight frown on his face.

"I suggest for you to be completely still next time during a styling session," he said simply, laying the facts down in a firm voice, "it is quite unprofessional for a model to fidget under the appliance of makeup and hair-styling products."

"Ooh, _reprimanding_, Sasuke," Kakashi wiggled his brows, not because of the actual criticism, but because that single visible eye of his had caught every shade of red crawling along the brunette's cheek and neck whilst the hair-doing session. It was just so _amusing_.

The elegant singer would have thrown his water bottle at him if he was not busy observing the redhead carefully with calculating eyes, face tilted at an angle so that his flush would have time to settle. He rubbed the back of his neck.

Good _god_, what was that?

And for once, the almighty bitchy king-of-prissiness Uchiha Sasuke was rendered speechless.

"So, Sabaku-san, what do you think of working with Sasuke today?" the agent later whispered into the hairdresser's ear as the two observed a huddle of models being escorted to the photo room. "Good? Bad?"

Gaara cocked his head, scissors snug tight against his thigh in his jean pocket. He liked the feeling of the cool metal against his skin through the clothing—perhaps it was his one last lingering link to his past of quietly playing with the cold glint of knives. It was comforting.

"He was much quieter than I expected him to be." The man admitted easily, finding no reason to hide whatever thoughts circulated around his—what most people call insufferably _boring_—brain. "I have heard that he is quite the complainer."

"Oh, he is, he is." Another invisible smile came to tug at the middle-aged man's lips, and Kakashi tossed his silver hair back, pleased: "But he must have had little to complain about today—which means you've passed with flying colors, Sabaku-san. Congratulations." _Congratulations on making him flushed, too—it's been a long while since Sasuke's been even remotely turned on. I _applaud_ you._

Gaara—thankfully—had no inkling of what was dancing gleefully about the agent's head and accepted the congrats silently, shifting so that his jacket now was rolled down over his shoulders.

The heat was truly unbearable. It was a stark contrast to the blood-chilling cold sweeping the nation outdoors; it only urged the man to want to leave faster, though he couldn't escape this place until his sister was done modeling. Apparently, having his job session and her modeling session coincide was the perfect opportunity to smack the two together for some good old carpooling—at least, to their uncle.

Oblivious of whatever had overcome the usually prissy Sasuke—who attempted to cool himself down during the photo shoot with thoughts of old grannies and mud-covered pigs—the only thought swimming lazily through the hairstylist's mind was this:

_I wonder what Naruto is eating right now…_

Ramen. Duh.

Stupid Gaara.

-o-o-o-o-

Edit: due to complaints on the confusion, I went back in and added more time-hooks to show where people are. The Shikamaru-Gaara scenes take place two years prior to the present time of this story, shown by mention that they were both just out of school and that Shikamaru (present) has been working in the industry for about two years. Tsunade went to scream at whoever it was on the phone right after she spoke to Gaara in the first scene (shown by mentions that she would have been normally finished with her breakfast at the time) and that the entire Naruto POV scene takes place before the Gaara-Sasuke scenes. The last scene is the most "present" if you would like to think of it that way. Though it is still jumpy, I thank you for reading this short edit hopethat this clarifies things!

AN: Okay... I know I promised more Gaanaru and Neji's continuation this chapter buuuuut... for the sake of moving the story along, I cut out the Gaanaru (nooooo! I know... I'll some of the uncut scenes in the next chapter) and I'm definitely adding Neji's conclusion in the next chapter as well. This chapter jumps around a bit: it starts BEFORE Gaara meets Sasuke up at the modeling site (hope that was obvious) and ends with him finishing the haircut.

I know some people were looking forward to some good ol' Sasunaru (like in Breaking the Music) but I decided to have some fun and make the failed secondary pairing Gaasasu (this does have significance) instead. I know... shoot me. _This is still a Gaanaru fanfiction_. I hope I got that clear.

Last note: I need to know what readers are more interested in: Sasuke's POV, Gaara's POV or Naruto's POV? This is an issue becuase the main reason it's taking so long to get anywhere is that I'm trying to fit in three POVs at once evenly. This isn't the end-all-be-all but I am interested in seeing which POV I should work with/develop with the most in the story, and, hopefully, I can move a bit quicker. Thanks for reading! And please, leave a comment. I really, really appreciate it.


	5. Five

Konoha Hair and Nail salon

--by Flightangel

-o-o-o-o-

5

-o-o-o-o-

Wednesday, six o' clock in the morning—two pairs of leather-clad feet stalked confidently up linoleum-tiled hallways. One owner of such feet was dressed in a suit and tie with a classy-looking briefcase clasped in his left hand, and the other was a woman in a blouse and dress pants and a folder tucked under her arm. The darkness of the morning air was evident through little cracks in the shades, though cast in further darkness by the brilliance of fluorescent lighting, and the hum of coffee in the worker's lounge gave off one message:

The office was beginning to come to life.

The two stopped in front of a wonderfully polished mahogany doorway. Anxiety sudden clutched the gut of the woman, who took a nervous step backwards. "A-are you sure?" she whispered under her breath. "You sure Father had asked for our presence? He—He'll be very angry if we came and bothered him if he didn't call us."

The man in the suit sighed, a hand riffling through his tinted-caramel hair. Of course, highlighted hair was strictly against protocol, but Hyuuga Neji could and will always get away with most anything, especially when his clients were eccentric fashion designers and models and other such "artistic" people who squealed and tried to _touch_ his locks instead of reporting him to the upper manager.

"Yes, Hinata-sama, Hiashi-sama did call—and he said it was quite important. Here, I'll knock on the door, alright?" The woman took another tentative step backwards as the older of the two lifted up a confident fist and rapped the door sharply. After a moment's pause, a voice from within called out:

"Come in."

The two obliged, and found themselves standing in front of a large, wooden desk currently being occupied by none other than the executive manager of the Hyuuga Modeling Company (US Branch): Hyuuga Hiashi… sama. Systematically, the two Hyuuga cousins gave a quick bow, as governed by protocol.

"Hinata—Neji." he addressed them coolly, the deep grooves in his face suddenly becoming evident in the frown that soon graced his face. "Neji, what is with your hair?"

"_Gomen-nasai, _Hiashi-sama." The businessman swiftly apologized, voice just as composed and cool as his still pruning uncle—light-blondish highlights inevitably pooled down his shirt when he gave another quick, and stiff, bow. He straightened his back, suit ruffling as he did so. "What is it you called us here for?"

"What is it indeed?" the addressed man mused aloud, and signaled for his kin to seat themselves in the lounge chairs positioned before the desk. Hinata almost stumbled over her leather soles trying to get her posterior into the cushion without looking too relieved, and gave a sheepish cough when her father locked eyes on her feet. Neji sat completely still, right hand subconsciously reaching over and fiddling with a ring on his left.

"Neji, Hinata—I have assigned you two to be in charge of a new project my superiors have asked for me to employ here in the states—" _the superiors being the members of the Hyuuga family running the main branch of the company back in Japan_, "—in which we will try and get as many models out in the fashion industry as possible _and_ recruit new ones. We will also be aiming to expand our communication network and raise or profit as much as possible."

Hinata pulled at her dress pants distractedly, wondering if they were too dirty. Kiba had accidentally spilled tomato juice on the hem this morning, but she hadn't any other pairs and—oh, what if her father noticed? He'd never quite liked Kiba anyway, but she didn't want to give him more incentive to dislike the brunette.

"And that is…?" Neji raised a slim brow, hands in his lap. The executive director reached into a pile of neatly composed paper and withdrew a single sheet. He handed it wordlessly to his more rapt nephew, who took it in one hand and skimmed it over, a light frown slowly etching itself onto his face.

"N-Neji-niisan…?" Hinata fought the urge to lean precariously out of her seat.

One, because she would probably fall over. Two, because her father would disapprove. And three, she would look silly, and there was nothing more her relatives hated then one of their kin being _silly_.

She instead occupied herself with fussing over her pant hem, eyes darting to and fro her father and cousin as she picked at it with a hand.

"…this is quite an odd idea, Uncle," The young businessman admitted slowly, eyes nearing the end of the page: "A fashion show in collaboration with—may I remind you—a _rival_ modeling company and multiple fashion lines and salons—what do you mean to achieve with this?"

"I do not decide what I do," Hiashi replied coolly, "it is the superiors. As for what the goal is, I already mentioned it. It is this: already professional models need work in higher level lines; higher level lines need more capable models in order to perform. Aspiring models need to get jumpstarted; lines who also need more models can pick the best out of the lot. Fashion designers who need jobs may also display their work on some of the models—and so on and so forth. This, in general, Neji, is a show of networking. We need to strengthen our links with some of those fashion lines and need to make more connections with the new and young rising designers and models. It is that simple."

Hinata was still picking at her pant hem.

Neji sighed, helpless. He was an intelligent businessman—hard-working, set in his ways, and experienced—but he couldn't go on and disobey his superiors, especially with what his personal life was up at the moment. His place in the Hyuuga family hall was already in hot water as it was.

"So…?"

"I brought Hinata here as a representative for the advertising department—_Hinata_!" The woman flinched, brought out of her musing world of tomato-juice stains. "Hinata, your task is in the manila folder over here—in summary, try and get the word out as fast as you can. Neji, you're in charge of calling up and inviting the names in this folder here—" Neji couldn't help but let an irritated look cross his face.

He hated calling people.

"—and the rest is written in the summary. If you have no questions, than you two are dismissed." His uncle looked down and picked up a fountain pen in anticipation of finishing some paperwork, and then abruptly peered back up. "Oh, and congratulations."

Neji gave no response.

Two pairs of leather-clad soles quietly trudged down linoleum halls. One pair belonged to a man dressed in a suit with a briefcase and folder in one hand, stiff and with a considering expression on his face. The other figure, a woman, tripping over her pants and wondering who she should recruit to help sort her out, held two folders clasped to her chest and looked out at the now brightening sky.

What a month this would be.

-o-o-o-o-

Gaara was nonchalantly trekking up the marketplace sidewalk with his breakfast clenched in his left hand when he had a suddenly _odd_ feeling. It wasn't a good feeling either, and it struck him with a sense of unease.

Turning around, he allowed the winds to gust his face as he stared out at the brightening sky.

It was _malicious_, if that was the right word. Not good. Scrutinizing the sky a bit closer—as if he was to find some specter or ghost or whatever spiritual thing he suspected was tickling him, however unlikely—he finally forced his legs to move and continued his way up to the salon, a new eeriness now prickling the hairs at the back of his neck.

Strange. Odd. Ghostly. Inhumane. Useless. _Stranger to mankind—_

—he needed to leave. He quickened his step and disappeared into a crowd of dull grays and browns, never more relieved than to escape from whatever had tried to haunt him.

It was _creepy (_even for him).

-o-o-o-o-

Sasuke was lying horizontal on the sofa, chewing rice crackers and blueberries and eyes boring holes in the television, when the phone rang.

_Dammit. _He didn't _want_ to get off the couch. Maybe he'd just leave the damn thing screeching until whoever it was would give up… but no. He soon decided that the blasted ringing wasn't worth it.

The singer snatched the receiver up irritably.

"Uchiha Sasuke."

A low, carefully calculated voice responded: "I know your name, Sasuke."

The brunette instinctively stiffened at the familiar tone, hand frozen above a bowl of blueberries lying innocently in his lap.

"Congratulations, little brother. It seems like you found someone worthy enough of your bitchiness."

"Like you are one to talk," the younger of the two muttered under his breath and unfroze himself, swinging his legs down so that they gracefully landed with a sigh on the carpeting of the floor. "What the hell do you want, Itachi?"

The slightly-amused older sibling spent a good minute in silence (from years of dealing with one another through family therapy and counseling, amusement was an emotion that Sasuke had first come to recognize in his brother), unnerving the younger singer. The man switched ears. "Itachi?"

"Oh, nothing. But, on to business: have you contacted Kakashi yet?"

Sasuke raised a brow, scowling. "Why should I contact Kakashi? I don't have much planned today."

"Ah, foolish, _foolish_, little brother. Do you not realize the buzz going about town at the moment? Or has your arrogance gotten to your head?"

_How about _your_ arrogance getting to _your_ head?_ Sasuke allowed a slightly unappealing frown to pucker his lips, popping a handful of blueberries into his mouth.

He _hated it_ when his brother called him foolish. It was like he was still a little brat, scrawny and gangly and unappealing to look at. Nothing like the him of today, of course.

The aforementioned singer swallowed his blueberries: "And what exactly is this buzz that you are talking about?"

"Why, the fashion show, Sasuke!" Itachi's holier-than-thou voice was really grating on the young man's nerves. "The Hyuuga Fashion Show! Or have you not heard? Pity. You never _did_ keep up with the news, did you?'

Sasuke squashed some blueberries onto a rice cake and looked at the atrocious mess scathingly. It took tremendous willpower to keep those pert lips closed and not to blabber out that he _did_ keep track of the news and that he's never heard of a damn fashion show and what the hell this had anything to do with him—but he did.

Itachi continued: "I was just calling to see if you were interested in it. You see," the man paused, "_I_ am going to be in the show, so I was just _wondering_." He gave another pause, this time sounding a little more than amused, "But I see you are not interested in such things after all. Pity. I was going to enjoy seeing your pitiful face on the catwalk, but I guess you are sparing me the chance." There were murmurs on the other end of the phone, and Itachi seemed to be turning around and hissing at someone (not arguing; _hissing_). He returned to the receiver, "Anyhow, little brother, you are just as amusing to talk to as ever. If talking to a stone wall was amusing. Good bye."

At the click of the phone, there was a brief moment of silence in the cottage. Eventually, this peaceful harmony was broken.

Sasuke threw the receiver down onto the tile floor—it landed with a loud sizzling noise and slid underneath the coffee table—and angrily chewed on rice crackers, too enraged to think straightly.

_Damn_ Itachi! He _knew_ his brother was challenging him, goading him on—and even though he knew, he was just as willing to take the damn bait. Fashion show? "Pitiful Face"? Ha! Pitiful face his butt! He'll show Itachi a "pitiful face"! And what was with that "stone wall" comment? Did Itachi realize exactly what he was talking about when he said that?

Stone wall!

Roughly tossing the bowl of blueberries and rice crackers onto a coffee table amassed with magazines and newspapers and other junk, he lifted himself off the couch and stalked to his room. Pausing in front of a full-length mirror, he stopped to examine himself.

Tousled, but still good-looking. That was _great._ Self-consciously, his fingers flew up to his injury, still sore and balding and altogether cringe-inducing. His jaw clenched.

When he'd returned from his modeling session, late at night, he'd discovered two things wrong with his house: one, that there was snow and mud _staining_ his pretty white porch, and two, that there was a note jammed messily between the door and doorframe.

Not only had the blond kid crashed into him, put him out of commission for a day, and gave him an embarrassing injury, but he'd trespassed his house, purposely screwed up his porch (Sasuke could find no other explanation why his porch was so dirty, as feet could never in their life "accidentally" hold up that much dirt) and attempted entry through his door! That little _punk_—he'd—he'd—argh!

He glared at the "apology" note crumpled up on his desk, ebony-colored eyes frying the thing into oblivion. Some apology note. _Damn him_!

He turned from the mirror, scouring his room in search of his cellphone before finally finding the thing lying innocently on his bookcase. Squatting on his bed, he scrolled through his contact list.

It really, _really_, didn't help that the scrawl messily written on the note was chillingly familiar. So familiar, in fact, that Sasuke took one look at that note and had to fight the urge to run the other way. But no.

Uchihas do not run the other way _just because_ some guy's handwriting strongly resembled the handwriting of their ex-boyfriend. It just wasn't _done_.

Besides, Sasuke was quite educated enough to know that completely different people can have the same handwriting, and that a type of handwriting wasn't isolated to a single person (he and his brother had very similar handwriting, for instance, and Sasuke would like to think that the two brothers were anything but similar).

But _still_. It was frightening.

And the criminal that had done all this to him was _blond_.

He pressed speed dial and waited for his lazy bastard-of-an-agent to rummage his phone out of whatever mess he'd inevitably tossed his cell into, hand tapping the back of the cold metal case.

"Hello?"

"Kakashi," Sasuke snarled, voice tight: "About this Fashion show thing… from the Hyuuga company. I need you to fill me on some things…"

-o-o-o-o-

The cold sidewalks cowered under the sun, icy surfaces clouding together. The winds played with the stray passerby's hair, tickled the trees, and danced about the creaking store signs—a constant annoyance to the everyday people of the Konoha Shopping District.

Wednesday, as if to contrast the dullness of Tuesday's empty shift, soon brought waves of insensitive, loud bustling patrons into the Konoha Hair and Nail Salon, who graciously poured themselves through the front door and immediately began filling the air up with pointless nonsense and complaints and whines and moans and other things that made even Naruto want to pull out his hair.

"No, no, no, shorter, shorter—no, _stop_, that's too short! Ugh! You stupid hairdresser, even I could do better—_I said shorter, didn't I_?"

Naruto danced around the irritable woman slouched inside the dressing chair, licking dry lips nervously as he attempted to interpret the wave of conflicting information being strewn out from the patron's lips: "I want it to be kinda flashy but sophisticated, short but not too short, rough but still smooth to the touch—and, oh, _oh_, I want highlights that are red but not too red or else I'll be mistaken for being too young—but make sure I still look youthful!"

Naruto threw a helpless look at Gaara, who just gave him a dismissing nod that said: _just do whatever you want and suck it up_. The blond took a long swig of his water bottle and tried not to break out in a sweat.

"Well, we have a free space tomorrow between nine and ten in the morning, two to three in the afternoon, and five to six in the evening—which of them fits your schedule best, sir?" Sakura, speaking incessantly on the phone, scribbled notes on a notepad with a pink frilly pen she'd rummaged from the drawers, "Yes, yes, our prices are wonderful—discount? Well, pardon me, but what age are you sir? We have special discounts for those over fifty… oh, pardon me—well, we also have discounts for businessmen, does that interest you—"

"—Sakura, Sakura have you heard—oh, sorry." A blonde woman, flouncing in the door with a faux fur jacket identical to Sakura's own, huddled on the seat closest to the secretary desk, eyes bright as if the gossip on her tongue was about to burst forth any moment.

Sakura switched the receiver to her other ear.

"Sorry, sir, I have someone else on the line. Please hold!"

She covered the receiver and turned towards the other woman, rapt and to attention. The taller woman—blonde and chic: Yamanaka Ino, a constant presence in the salon during lunch hours—leaned forward, waving blue-painted nails in the air.

"Oh my god, you know what we just heard?"

The secretary leaned back in her chair. "No, what?"

The blonde glanced left to right before leaning even closer. She lowered her voice to an excited whisper. "I heard a certain couple is getting _married—!_"

Sakura, delighted to be on the in to such an important piece of gossip, gasped and said, "Gods, Ino, stop being such a tease! Who? Who is it?" She paused. "Not you and Chouji?"

Ino reared back, a faint blush creeping onto her cheeks. "What—no! No, of course not, we've only been dating for a year, not quite enough for engagement." She calmed herself down and resumed her cheer. "But guess, _guess_! Oh, it's so exciting!"

The bustle of the two women caught the attention of Naruto, who was taking another alleged "break" from work. The blond was twirling in the chair closest to his fellow hairstylist, lolling his head on the headrest and playing with three rubber bands he'd strung across his fingers, looking up when the laughter of the women caught his ears.

The rambunctious man turned to the quiet, stone-like redhead, a cheery grin on his face. "Hey, Gaara, what do you think they're talking about over there? Men? Man, what if they're talking about me?" He gasped, putting a hand to his heart, "Such an honor!"

Gaara wisely chose to ignore him, but Naruto persisted.

"Or… maybe their talking about you! You and your hair and stuff… or maybe their talking about other guys? I don't know, girl's gossip is strange…"

Gaara leaned forward to snip a particularly difficult piece of hair that was insisting on lodging itself behind the client's ear, brows furrowed.

"…do you think Ino's going to get it going with Chouji anytime soon? I mean, she's, like, gossip girl number one, but the guy she's dating is kind of plump, wouldn't you say? Doesn't make much sense to me… Hm… hey, do you think Ino's pretty? 'Cause I think Ino's pretty, even though she's a jerk face—she's got nice boobs and—"

"_Naruto._" Gaara suddenly intervened, turning towards the blond with a rather terrifying look in his eyes. "Get back to work."

The blond took a step backwards, abashed.

Meanwhile, the gossip on the other side of the room continued.

"Is it… well, who else is it?" Sakura turned to peer discreetly at the two hairstylists calmly sitting in each other's presence in the back of the room, mouth an 'o', "Gaara and Naruto?"

"Sakura, are you insane? The two aren't even _dating_!" Ino hissed, before changing her voice into a more argumentative tone. "And besides, as we were discussing before, there is _no evidence_ that either one likes the other! I just don't _see it_, Sakura."

"Well, you don't spend the majority of your day in an office watching them out of the corner of your eye," Sakura argued back, setting down her pink frilly pen. "They've got tons of chemistry! They just need a little… push."

Ino widened her eyes, pink lips pursing. "_No_, Sakura, no way! Remember the rules of the bet! You can't move the relationship along yourself, so don't even think about it!" She paused. "But _guess_!"

"I don't know!" Sakura frowned and leaned down onto her desk, "Just tell me for goodness' sake, I feel like I'm going to _die_."

Ino let a wicked grin creep upon her face, eyes glowing. "Well, _I don't know_… maybe you wouldn't like to know after all."

"Just tell me!"

The fight was quickly catching the curious attention of the patrons, who put down their years-old magazines and peered at the two with wide, interested eyes, mouths agape. Even the cringing of whoever was unfortunate enough to be Tsunade's victim was muted by interest.

Yet despite this attention, there was one woman who seemed to be blissfully unaffected by this little scene of death-inducing drama was unfolding in the front desk. Perhaps it was because she was used to such screeching (her sister and cousin could put up quite a match), or, more likely, she was too busy doing whatever she was doing near the entrance of the lobby.

A certain Hyuuga-company advertising agent was—very intently, mind—tacking leaflets onto the bulletin board, oblivious.

In truth, she actually had a little trouble reaching all the way up to the top and had to enlist the help of kind Haku, who was easily half a head taller than her, to be able to post the entire poster along the top of the cork.

"T-Thank you, Haku-san," she said graciously, giving the man a slight bow. The manicurist, in turn, graced Hyuuga Hinata with a kind smile and quietly slipped back to his station, once again picking up his English workbook.

The woman followed him with warm violet-colored eyes, feeling sentimental.

The quiet disposition of the man reminded her of her mother—that curved smile, delicate hands, soft hair. Though she couldn't say that aloud—how embarrassing would it be for a man to be compared to a woman!

Hinata huffed and brushed pieces of brown cork off of her dress pants, feeling jittery and nervous, though a bit satisfied at her own courage. She had—to her own surprise—been able to _call up perfect strangers _and not stutter a bit—a miracle. Neji would have said something sarcastically offensive if he'd been in the room when she did it, but he wasn't. Thank god.

Though she'd placed several calls to famous companies and the like and felt rather good about her advertising strategy and pitch, she still believed that true advertising lay in the traditional ways of tack-and-hope, in which she carried thousands of leaflets documenting the show and tried to fill multitudes of salons and production studios with them within two days. The goal was to drown people in them.

It was quite tiring, as one could immediately see.

"I don't know what you see in our salon, since we're pretty local, but go on ahead," Tsunade has said to her through mouthfuls of lunch-box breakfast, "we don't get many models or fashion designers here and only one of our stylists is professionally educated, but I'll try and put in some calls for you." Oh, sure, that was fine, Tsunade-sama. Every call counts, you know!

Hinata was shuffling leaflets back into her already overflowing book bag, eyebrows creasing in frustration, when she finally overheard the two college students bickering:

"I'll give you some hints… one of them you know quiet well."

"Ino, I know many people 'quite well'. If I didn't know one 'quite well' you wouldn't even be sparing me your presence!"

"Ooh, moving onto the tough words now, eh, Ms. Haruno? Just speak like a normal person!"

"I am!"

"Are not!"

"Am too!"

"Are not! And I don't think I'll tell you after all."

"Fine then!" The secretary did a swift turn in her seat, chin raised defiantly, "Go ahead, back to your little downtown café or wherever you stay when you're not in class. I don't care! I don't want to see your little snot-filled face until tomorrow!"

Ino was about to snap back, when she found herself stopped by a certain businesswoman.

"I-Ino-san, I think you've t-tortured Sakura-san enough…" Hinata intervened before Sakura could manage to pull her blonde friend's hair (and vice versa), adjusting her own business tie nervously.

She knew the two women from her days at high school, when she was that brainy and shy kid in the back and the two were the gossip girls of the day. It was a fragile friendship, mind, but the fact that she was both Asian and a member of the Japanese community automatically made her "one of them", an assumption she was grateful for at times. Like now. The incredulous look Ino was boring through her forehead was cold enough to even make hell freeze over.

She turned towards the other woman, voice hushed. "It's my cousin… Neji. He's getting married to Lee."

Sakura nearly fainted in shock, and Ino—who took a moment to realize that her awesome, dramatic piece of gossip had been stolen from right under her nose—let out a loud shriek of laughter, slapping the woman on the back. "You see! I told you it was good!"

"L-Lee!" The secretary blubbered for a moment, still trying to regain composure. "But weren't the two fighting just yesterday? And then Neji got his hair cut and left in a huff—_engaged_?"

"Yes, yes, it's all true! Just ask little Hinata here, she knows," Ino clasped the smaller woman's shoulders firmly, eyes bright with glee. Hinata glanced at the hand nervously, suddenly wishing that she wasn't in such close proximity with a woman she hardly knew. That hand was digging quite firmly into her muscle, however, allowing no chance of escape. "It was this huge bout of misunderstanding—and the end result is this! They haven't planned the wedding date yet, but we've _got_ to badger Lee to inviting us to his wedding—well, this is just _too good_."

Sakura was about to reply excitedly when Tsunade strode over, heels making their classic _click clack click clack _on smooth tile, hands on her hips.

"Sakura, aren't you in the middle of calling a patient? You have no time for gossip! Get back to work!" She then turned slightly to narrow her honey-brown eyes at both the businesswoman and college student, lips pursed. "And Ino, time and time again I tell you to _not_ distract Sakura while she is working! If you're going to stay around, at least wait until she's on _break_." She stalked back to her desk, apparently not going to grace Hinata with a littler reprimanding of her own.

The shy woman took this chance to wriggle out of Ino's claw-like grasp and quickly stepped backwards. Bending down to snatch a few stray leaflets that had flew onto the floor, the sound of her heart hammering wildly in her chest echoed in her ears.

Oh _kami-sama_!

She didn't like this at all. Not one bit. Tsunade hadn't said much of anything, but she was still embarrassed and frightened and—what if she told Father? But of course, Tsunade and Father weren't connected at all, but _still_. Maybe she should just go home and ask Kiba to put an ad in the newspaper. Take a break, then go scouting again.

Yes, that sounded good.

The pink-haired secretary pouted and threw a "call me later" signal with her hands at her leaving friend (Even such a good friend like Ino didn't want to sit in the presence of an angry and overbearing manager for too long) before once again pinking up the little pink frilly pen and moving back to the line of what must be a very exasperated customer: "Sorry, sir, the other customer was lonely and wanted to talk about his marriage plans—yes, yes, there _is _a discount…"

"Gaaaaaaaara."

The redhead continued to snip at the customer's hair, leaning down—again—to get a better look at the bottom of the hairdo. Blood red locks swept back with the motion, allowing the nape of his neck was exposed—his pale, white neck. It wasn't creamy or beautiful or even remotely abnormal looking, but the blond was captivated anyway.

Naruto sat swiveling in his chair, staring at the exposed skin for far longer than any normal man should, before crawling onto the arm rest so that he was mostly sitting up.

"Gaaaaaaaara—Gaara, look at meeee." He enthusiastically waved his arms up and down, up and down, and, finally, the redhead graced Naruto with a blank stare.

The blond man leaned forward onto his arms, a wicked grin on his face: "Hey, well, Iruka—my adoptive dad, you know, right?—anyway, we were going to go see the movies together this Saturday, but he says he can't come, 'cause he's busy, so…" He rubbed his nose, suddenly bashful. "So, uh… you want to go with me instead? I swear, it's good."

Gaara stared him incredulously, hands pausing in their cutting. Naruto fidgeted under his level stare, that cool set line for a mouth, furrowed brow. Maybe he should have stuck to staring at that nape. The redhead shook his head.

"I'm busy as well."

Naruto deflated a bit, disappointed. "Oh…"

"But I'm free on Sunday." He returned to his snipping, "Temari says that there is a nice restaurant open two doors down from one of the uptown salons, the kind that has all types of sushi and rice and noodles… and ramen." He paused. "You like ramen?"

Naruto, suddenly seeing his chance, nodded his head vigorously. "Yes, yes, I love ramen! When I was little, I was always fed ramen! I like it all my heart, yes!" The redhead graced him with another odd look, this time the kind that swept from the tip of his blonde head to the bottom of his black leather soles, before nodding to himself.

"I will take you there." He declared tonelessly, and returned to his cutting. "On Sunday."

And Naruto couldn't have been more thrilled.

-o-o-o-o-

While Hinata was hurrying home with her hood pulled up in the California cold, leaflets stuffed until her book bag looked like a bush, her cousin was experiencing much more unfortunate events at the moment.

Neji sat hunched over in his car, hands gripping the wheel of the damn thing until his knuckles were clammy and white. He was caught in freaking _traffic. _Other than child birth and alarm clocks, traffic was probably one of the most horrendous things the gods have ever bestowed upon the earth. Ever. Even if there probably wasn't traffic back in the good old sticks-and-stones age of cows and sheep, but _still. _

What was he doing here, sucking his breath in and enduring this torture, anyway? He could have been casually lounging around in his chair whilst speaking on a phone in his office, doing what he usually did, but _no_. Hinata-sama wanted to get all "technical" again and insisted that the managers were to get physically involved in the production.

"Physically involved" meaning that he went door-to-door recruiting old Hyuuga company friends instead of just calling them up like a normal, human being.

"Can't this lane go any faster?" he said to himself once, stonily. Hyuuga Neji didn't _growl_, or bark, or do any other barbaric thing like that. He _said_ things. Even if what he really wanted to do at the moment was tear the driver's wheel out of the front of the car and hurl it at those stupid Californian teenagers taking up space in the middle of the freeway.

Ah, yes.

It had been a bad day. His trip to the Akatsuki studios had been a complete disaster, seeing as the manager didn't quite like being interrupted in the middle of a recording and that half the singers employed there deserved to be an in insane asylum. The man was thankful enough to at least still have his tie draped around his neck. The next stop at a modeling site was even less fruitful.

This was partly because the type of modeling the models were participating in was nude modeling. This was also partly because the photographer was French and didn't know who the hell Neji was.

"Hyuuga. Modeling. Company." the brunette had said slowly, sweeping back his hair. "I have come to formally ask you or your manager or whoever is in charge to participate in a fashion show we are hosting." The photographer, stubbly chin and sunglasses and pouty lips and all, gave him a large, face-creasing frown.

"Show?" he barked sharply, surprising the usually aloof Hyuuga and causing the businessman to take a brief step backwards: "What show? Imma not in a show! I quit the circus ten years ago, man, I _quit!_ I am in no show! Pah! Show! Now go away, you are stealing the beautifying essence of sexiness being amplified by these wonderful models!" All with a French accent, of course, but Neji didn't specialize in imitation.

The traffic light finally decided to take pity on the poor man and flick green, a brilliant beacon of hope and happiness and good things all around. Neji enthusiastically stepped on the peddle, thrilled that he was _moving, _though thoughts of his next stop immediately quelled his newfound joy.

Konoha ANBU Fashion Corporation. Ugh. That line of clothing was only halfway good, in Neji's opinion, but he had to admit that there _were_ some genius designers amongst that mix. Though most of them were as insane as the Akatsuki Sound Studio, with their snake-skin suits and peacock-feathered behinds.

"Hyuuga Neji," A woman walking inside the fashion house with a bagel and coffee in her hands called out, surprised, when she first caught sight of the man gracefully slipping himself out of her car. Lunch break was a short affair in the average American's daily life, and even the Japanese-infiltrated Konoha district was no exception; lunch consisted of a quick stop at a fast-food drive through and a traffic jam back to the office before any of the manages noticed they were gone. The woman's rush was evident in the frizzy ends of her hair. "What are you doing here?"

"Business." he replied shortly.

Adjusting his tie and giving the older woman a short nod of his head, he gave her one long-sweeping look and inwardly clucked (he would never be caught dead clucking _outwardly_, of course). Kurenai had been the representative of the Konoha ANBU Fashion Corporation to the Hyuuga Modeling Company more than once, gracing the Hyuuga family with her uncombed, brownish hair and frightening red eyes, sensible flat-heeled shoes and odd style of dress.

Even now she had pale linen bandages wrapped all around her arms and torso, all held up with zippers and buttons and God-knows-what-else.

Really. Fashion designers were always tricky when it came to their clothes.

Kurenai quickly discussed with him in low tones what exactly he was up against on their way into the building, taking small bites from her bagel in-between sentences:

"Well, if it's unexpected business, don't think Jiraiya would take kindly to it. We're putting some designer's work in a local show this Saturday and everyone's running around and trying to get the last stitches on their collections last minute—" Bite, swallow, "I mean, Shikamaru spent almost an hour trying to convince Temari to let him attach peacock feathers to the rear end of his piece—"

Neji winced. _Peacock feathers. They do it every _damn _year_.

"—and he just went out to get some lunch, give himself a break." Another bite. "Some of the models didn't show up for fitting so we're not sure if they fit, and Jiraiya's being sued for taking inappropriate photographs and—well, I'll let you figure it out yourself." The woman took a sip of her coffee and made it so that Neji knew she was about to turn the opposite direction. "Oh, and tell Hinata I said hi. I heard from Shino that she and Kiba moved to a new apartment several blocks down…?"

"It's a quieter neighborhood," Neji graced the woman with some short explanation, "and it's bigger, since Kiba was thinking of bringing in more—" _Stinking, dirty, flea-ridden, _"—pups."

Kurenai gave an understanding nod, and, at the intersection between the elevators and downstairs office cells, the two departed from one another.

The Hyuuga spent the next few moments in complete and utter silence—apart from the buzz of the office, but such things had been long tuned out of the businessman's hearing range. The elevator was relatively new, with clean, un-greasy buttons and a nice carpet that hadn't been vomited on… yet. Must be something Jiraiya had just recently ordered.

The doors opened up to reveal dim fluorescent light bathing a white hallway filled with little white doors. This in itself would have been fine if this wasn't the headquarters from an insane fashion corporation. And with insane fashion corporations, one would expect nothing less than the abnormal.

As to cover up for the unoriginality of the halls, the designers had messily covered almost every square inch of anything except the floor with posters and scrap pieces of cloth and other artistic junk that made Neji's eyes water. It was neon. _Neon_.

Damn _artists_. They drove him _batty_ (forget the fact that his fiancé was an artist. Just forget it. He didn't quite feel like thinking of what had become of his condo these last two years).

Stepping out and attempting to both gracefully glide down the polished hallway and keep from wincing at the same time, Neji took four steps down the hall before overhearing a heated conversation raging on behind closed doors, two rooms from the elevator.

He paused, alert.

It wasn't like he _liked_ overhearing people fight, but with the cheap paper-thin walls and the echoing-manner of the hall, it wasn't like he had much of a choice.

"—you can't, you _can't_, you know what'll he do—how can you do that to him? I mean—it's been a long time, but the memories are still—"

"It's been a good eighteen years, Temari, he's grown up; he can handle it—"

"Do you even know what you're saying?! The sleeping fits have been getting worse lately, worse and worse! How do you think he's going to feel when you mention that again?"

"He can _handle it_, I'm _sure_, don't worry—"

"I don't care a damn if he can handle it, the yakuza would have the rest of his fingers chopped off within a day if he goes back there! You _can't_."

"Temari, calm down, I know what I'm—"

"No, you _don't know_, because if you knew you wouldn't be doing this and—and—why _now_? The sleeping fits are getting worse, but life is finally looking up. Everything's _stable_. You want to disrupt that?"

"We can't put this off any longer—another couple of years and it'll hurt more than before."

"Right, and you don't think it's going to hurt him _now_? Look, they're already situated here, right in the damn _United States_, and it's like walking on eggshells as is—it's going to be like throwing him from the pan and into the fire, for God's sake! _And besides_—"

"Look, Temari, I don't have time to argue with you about this." A clunk, as if something heavy was being set down, "I have an appointment in thirty minutes; we'll discuss this at—"

"_We aren't discussing anything at home, you hear me?_ Not in front of Kankuro and Gaara and—and—argh! _Listen_ to yourself, Yashamaru-jiisan!" The woman's voice turned pleading, shrill: "Don't do this, please don't do this, I'm begging you, _begging _you, don't, don't—"

"I _can't_, I _can't_—I can't _not_ do it, Temari." The man's voice was hushed and was much harder to hear, hidden behind plaster walls. "It's my duty. My job."

At that point, Neji realized that he needed to get out of there. Fast. Probably because the doorknob was jiggling and this Yashamaru man would most likely spot him eavesdropping on their conversation the minute he exited the room. It wasn't like he _wanted_ to eavesdrop, as he said before, but it'd look… awkward. And a bit suspicious.

Jiraiya was peering giddily at a Playboy magazine under his desk when a sharp, urgent rap on the door called his attention away from his pornographic fantasies. Lips drawing together in a large, face-wrinkling frown, he yelled. "Come in, come in! Who is it?"

Hyuuga Neji quickly slid himself into the room, and immediately wished he hadn't. The walls here were worse then the hallway. They were not only neon and cloth-covered, but full of images of _women_. Half-dressed women, to be exact.

Straightening his tie, he attempted to turn a blind eye to the images and gave the executive a quick, formal bow. "Hyuuga Neji, Hyuuga Modeling Corporation," he introduced himself sternly.

Jiraiya casually tossed the Playboy into an open drawer and clasped his hands on his desk, leaning forward. He was an old man—or middle-aged, but to most people he was going on "old"—at fifty or sixty or so, dressed in casual traditional Japanese wear and sitting cross-legged on a swivel chair. Again, the weird dress. Fashion designers.

Blinking a moment, the older man eventually found whatever had gotten lost on the way to his tongue. "Ah, yes, the Hyuuga fashion show—I was at a pitch this morning about it, yes, I remember—_ahem_," He coughed into a fist, suddenly looking uneasy. "You are here to ask for our participation?"

"The Hyuuga Modeling Company and the Konoha ANBU Fashion Corporation have always worked closely together," Neji replied coolly, "and we would expect no less than your full support." Arrogant and a bit bold, especially for a young man like Neji, but he was being backed by a years-old company that had a rather nasty bite if one didn't obey it.

Jiraiya didn't quite like being bitten.

He sighed, suddenly wishing he'd never invited the man in and that he'd gone on reading his playboy. But no. He couldn't do that. "Of course, Konoha ANBU Fashion Corporation would love to participate," he finally said, "but I have to receive permission from the co-owner of this fashion house."

Neji blinked, surprised. Co-owner? Best to his—very clear, accurate, and up-to-date—knowledge, there was only one executive, owner, and manager of the corporation, and that was the man slumped before him, in all his glory. Was this a ruse to stall time? He _hated _being put off. It wasn't a kind feeling.

He began to finger his ring, eyes narrowed. "And that is…?"

Jiraiya sighed and scratched his head—either thoughtfully or out of exasperation, who knew?—leaning back in his chair and tugging at a sleeve. "My wife, Tsunade. And until I receive word from her, I cannot give you an official answer."

Neji inwardly groaned.

-o-o-o-o-

The lantern was lit.

Naruto stared at it incredulously, a sinking feeling beginning to inch into his stomach and arms and numbing him all over. In fact, the minute he caught sight of the damn thing up the steps, he'd almost fallen over. Fortunately for him, he was at least intelligent enough to realize that falling down three flights of stairs was fatal, and had righted himself instantly.

After reaching his doorstep, however, he couldn't help bit take a quick step backwards, eyes observing the horrifying clues: the lantern lit; the lights inside the apartment on; the sound of music playing. Oh god.

This only meant one thing.

"I-Iruka…" he chuckled nervously as he slunk in, hands clammy as they attempted to remove his coat and put it on the coat rack without attracting too much attention. The addressed man was sitting down at the rickety kitchen table, seemingly paying no attention to his adoptive son as he flipped through a hairstyling magazine.

"Naruto." the hairdresser replied coolly, flipping the page. "Sit down."

Naruto gulped. _Oh no, oh no, oh no…_

"Sitting down" was never a good thing.

It had been _such_ a good day, too. Gaara and him planning to go on a date (it was a date, the blond firmly insisted to himself, though he did wonder whether or not the redhead realized that), him having enough money to spare to eat out (he'd gone home to drop off his bags and other belongings) and him, _for once in his life,_ not being scolded by his buxom and terrifyingly powerful manager. He'd even planned to come home from dinner and watch a bit of television.

But no. Fate insisted on twisting his plans in a knot. A big, Iruka-sized knot.

He hesitantly crawled into a rickety chair, first wondering if it'd be best to just lose nerve and scramble out the door, then cursing himself for being idiotic enough to hide his spare key under the doormat.

_Everyone_ hid the key under the damn doormat.

Even Gaara did sometimes—not that Naruto would know. He _didn't. _(It was hidden exactly under the center of his brown-and-red fuzzy doormat thing which was cute because it had a picture of a bunch of raccoons on it—Naruto had once been tempted to buy one that looked exactly the same at Wal-Mart, but had resisted as it would look extremely suspicious. And no, he didn't know any of this. Really.)

But that wasn't the point. Perhaps next time he'd try to hide the brass tool in that shriveled up plant situated next to the doorway, filling his front step with a sense of impending doom.

Not that the air currently floating about the room wasn't dooming enough, mind, but the hairdresser would willingly let his mind wander about rather then focus on the said aura being directed at him at the moment.

Iruka set down his magazine and closed it, face turning upwards so that Naruto could catch every set muscle, hard eyes, narrowed and furious glare—a glare that urged Naruto to slink farther down his chair.

He cringed, awaiting reprimanding.

"I just heard from Kakashi." said the older man, voice neutral. Naruto was still cringing.

"He says that Sasuke found a _note_ on his door. A note that looked eerily like your handwriting."

The blond flinched. That idiotic, no-good, bastard-of-an-agent that—how _dare _he tell Iruka _anything? _Now, he was going to get him _killed. _Great going, Kakashi.

Naruto would have been biting his nails at this point, but biting his nails meant that he had to move, and moving under that hawk-like, death-inducing glare-of-doom was like throwing yourself over a ten-story tall cliff.

Iruka looked fixedly at his adoptive son. "Naruto, when I asked you to apologize, I asked you to apologize to him _face-to-face_, not through some—some—_dumb, meaningless_ note! Naruto! How could you?" Suddenly, the hairdresser seemed less angry and more upset, wounded, depressed—crossing his arms, he leaned back in his chair. "Naruto, was this another ploy to get out facing Sasuke?"

The blond said nothing.

"I've already said it before! It's been ten years! Look at me—_look at me_. I may be lying through my teeth but there is a possibility that Sasuke doesn't even remember what you two were fighting about all these years ago—hell, maybe he's—oh, I don't know…" The brunette sighed, suddenly feeling a bit more old than young. "Maybe he's _let it go_, Naruto. Like you should."

There was, for a moment, a brief pause of silence between the two, in which the only noise being omitted was from a CD Iruka had popped into the stereo and was twirling about the hairdresser with its big, fake, ironic happiness. Finally, Naruto spoke:

"I don't think it's the kind of thing that's forgotten easily, Iruka."

He clenched his own jaws, muscles taunt as he leaned forward. "And I'm not going to forgive him so easily."

Iruka stared at him hard, hands clasped together and wide, brown eyes locking in on Naruto's own. Finally, he tore his eyes away from the younger man and leaned back, crossing his arms. "Well, I don't see you have a choice. Kakashi and I have decided to take matters into our own hands." He once again snatched up the magazine and began flipping through the pages, face nonchalant once again, "We've set up a meeting between the two of you."

Naruto's eyes widened, brows furrowing downwards in what became an incredulous expression of shock that encompassed the entirety of his face. "You can't do that!"

_Forget about being killed by _Iruka_, I'm going to be snapped in half by Sasuke and his bitchy prissy self! His damn "I am holier than thou" attitude that he _swore_ he didn't pick up from his brother WHICH HE DID and his creepy arrogant voice and cough and attitude and—_

"Oh, yes I can," Iruka snapped, suddenly feeling irritable and tired. He scratched the back of his head, hand tugging at his ponytail before sweeping back stray hairs and coughing into his hand. "I'll drag you there myself, I will. You underestimate the amount of free time I have on my hands."

—_his anger—crap, that _temper _of_ _his—with that temper and his fists he'd—oh, _damn.

The sinking feeling was back and rising, and Naruto realized that it was time his life was going to _end_. Rooted on this trembling excuse-for-a-chair, he allowed a wave of tangled, cluttered and mismatched thoughts to flood through his already lolling brain, hands gripping the seat.

Never going to make up his mind about college, never going to jumpstart his career, never going to get a chance to maybe start a relationship with Gaara (Iruka would probably blush and stammer and hit Naruto about if he knew what he was thinking, but he couldn't so he didn't), never get to confess to Jiraiya that it was _he_ who'd stolen those damn photographs and not Konohamaru, never going to—_never going to_—

"When?" he managed to say softly, voice tight. Iruka flipped the page, pausing to admire the sleekness of a model's hair being featured in one of the columns.

"Tomorrow afternoon," the man replied, flipping the page again, "at twelve o' clock. I'm coming to the salon to pick you up. Directly. No escape, Naruto." He narrowed his eyes. "Don't even think about pretending to be sick."

_Damn_.

Naruto slunk further down into his seat, making up prayers as he went (though he wasn't at all religious). Give his apartment to Haku, who needed living space. Give his television and table to Sakura. Give the rest of his furniture to Iruka and Kakashi. And leave all his hairstyling materials, money, and personal items to Gaara, as well as his affection and admiration and perhaps, through some ghostly presence, his odd feelings. Maybe.

Dear god.

_I'm going to _die

-o-o-o-o-

AN: ... okay, so I know chapter 4 pretty much got on everyone's nerves (flips through reviews and winces). I'm in the process of (hopefully) fixing it, so please bear with it... meanwhile, here's another chapter. I feel that it's also pretty low-key, but at least it is in order and switches every other scene between a Naruto/Gaara POV and an Other POV. I know you asked for more Gaara/Naruto POVs (obviously, since this story is targeted to a Gaanaru audience) but I do feel like I need to include other characters to help bring the plot forward.

I also hope this chapter ties in how Shikamaru and Neji are related to the story plot and how their parts in previous chapters weren't exactly _too_ random and annoying (this chapter actually introduces the basis of the story plot... kind of boring for those looking out just for the Gaanaru scenes, but this story does have to have some sort of plot to keep it moving... though I promise I'll work harder to put everything back to Gaara/Naruto's POV soon.)

Thanks to all my reviewers (whether or not you reviewed good or bad, each review does count towards something) and I hope you leave by a comment (even if you've already commented before, I still appreciate anything). Being a fanfiction writer, reading reviews are the signal to me that someone is actually reading this damn thing XD.


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